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EVELOPy^ENT 



EWALD FlUGEL 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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THOMAS CARLYLE. 



THOMAS GARLYLE'S 



Moral and Religious Development 



1- 

A STUDY: By EWALD FLUGEL. 



From the German, by 

cJESSIGA GILBERT TYLER. 



WITH A PORTRAIT. 



^13) ft iV' 



New York : 

M. L. HOLBROOK & CO. 

1891. 



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COPYRIGHT BY 

M. L. HOLBROOK, 

1891. 



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TO 

MY FATHER, 

WITH 

Love and Gratitude. 



" Indisputably enough, what notion each forms 
of the Universe is the all-regulating fact with 
regard to him." 

LaTTER-DaY PAMrHLETS, p. 253. 

" Do you ask why misery abounds among us ? 
I bid you look into the notion we have formed for 
ourselves of the Universe, and of our duties and 
destinies there. If it is a true notion, we shall 
strenuously reduce it to practice, — for who dare 
and can contradict his faith, whatever it may be, 
in the Eternal Fact that is around him? and 
thereby blessings and success will attend us in 
said Universe, or Eternal Fact we live amidst : 
of that surely there is no doubt." 

Ebenda, p. 252. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

Frontispiece. - Portrait of Thomas Carlyle 

Translator's Preface 11 

Author's Preface 15 

Author's Introduction 17 

CH.\PTER I. 

Cablyle's Belief, 

The Mystery of the World and Life 23 

Wonder and Astonishment 2-t 

Natural Supernaturalism 29 

The Laws of Nature 30 

The Book of Nature 31 

Space and Time 32 

The Infinite Unfathomahle 33 

The Kernel of Carlyle's Religious Belief .... 38 

CHAPTER n. 

The Mechanical Age. 

Inexorable Antagonism to Mechanical Things ... 40 

Machines for Education 41 

Philosophy, Science, Art — all depend on Machinery . . 48 

CHAPTER III. 

Cablyle's Relation to Christianity. 

I. —His Position with Reference to the Personality of 

Christ 45 

n.— His Perception of the Meaning of Christianity in the 

World's History 46 

ni. - His View of the Nature of Christianity ... 48 



Till CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

His View of the Doctrine of Predestination ... 53 

The Eeligion of Suffering 55 

Goethe's Joyous Contemplation of the World ... 57 

CHAPTER rV. 

Cakltle and the Various Phases of Christianitt : The 
Chubch and Theological Learning. 

The Bible 65 

The Church 67 

The Metaphysical and Philosophical Treatment of KeUgious 

Questions 71 

Jesuits 73 

Religion takes refuge in the Stomach ! . . . , 74 

CHAPTER V. 

God. 

The " New Religion " 77 

CHAPTER VI. 

Carlyle's Position with Reference to Science, and especial- 
ly TO Philosophy. 

The Limits of Philosophy 82 

English and Freuch Philosophy 83 

Locke, Reid, Hume, Hartley, etc 85 

Cabanis 86 

German Philosophy 87 

Kant . , 90 

Fichte 94 

Schelling and Hegel 96 

The Disease of Metaphysics 98 



CONTENTS. IX 

CHAPTER MI. 

Carltle's Position with Eeference to Poetry and Aet in 

General. 

PAGE. 

The Object of Poetry 100 

Milton's Ideal as a Poet 104 

Carlyle's Ideal as a Poet 105^' 

Prophet and Poet 109 

Penetration HI 

Music. Song 113 

Small Interest in the Plastic Arts 118 

Portraiture 120 

CHAPTER Vni. 

Cablylb's Attitude towards History. 

Man, a Divine Creation . . . • . . .122 

Artist and Mechanic 12G 

The True Poetry 129 

Carlyle's Heroism 130 " 

The Lesson's of the World's History . . . .131 

Carlyle and Aristotle 132 

CHAPTER IX. 

Carlyle's Ethics: "The Gospel of Work.'' 

The Unity of Mind and Morals I35 

Renunciation jgy 

The Ideal of Higher Morality I33 

His Mission jgg 

The Lessons of His Life l_l(j 



TKANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 



" It is well said, in every sense, that a man's 
religion is the chief fact with regard to him." 

"By religion," Carlyle says, "I do not mean 
here the church creed which he professes, the arti- 
cles of faith which he will sign and, in words or 
other^\ise, assert; not this wholly, in many cases 
not this at aU. We see men of all kinds of pro- 
fessed creeds attain to almost all degrees of worth 
or worthlessness under each or any of them. This 
is not what I call religion, this profession and as- 
sertion, which is often only a profession and asser- 
tion from the outworks of the man, from the mere 
argumentative region of him, if even so deep as 
that. But the thing a man does practically be- 
lieve (and this is often enough without asserting it 
even to himself, much less to others) ; the thing a 
man does practically lay to heart, and know for 
certain, concerning his vital relations to this mys- 
terious Universe, and his duty and destiny there, 
that is in all cases the primary thing for him, and 
creatively determines all the rest. That is his 
religion; or, it may be, his mere scepticism and 



xii translator's preface. 



no-religion : the manner it is in whicli lie feels 
himself to be spirituallj related to the unseen 
world or no-world ; and I say, if you tell me what 
that is, you tell me to a very great extent what the 
man is, what the kind of things he will do is. Of 
a man or a nation we inquire, therefore, first of 
all, What religion they had ? Was it heathen- 
ism, — pluraHty of gods, mere sensuous representa- 
tion of this Mystery of Life, and for chief recog- 
nised element therein Physical Force ? Was it 
Christianism ; faith in an Invisible, not as real 
only, but as the onl}' reaUty ; Time, through every 
meanest moment of it, resting on Eternity ; Pagan 
empu-e of Force displaced by a nobler supremacy, 
that of Holiness ? Was it Scepticism, uncertainty 
and inquiry whether there was an unseen world, 
any mystery of Hf e except a mad one ; — doubt as 
to all this, or perhaps unbelief and flat denial ? 
Answering of this question is giving us the soul of 
the history of the man or nation. The thoughts 
they had were the parents of the actions they did ; 
their feelings were parents of their thoughts : it 
was the unseen and spiritual in them that deter- 
mined the outward and actual ; — their religion, as 
I say, was the gi-eat fact about them." 

These few words of Carlyle's, taken fi'om his 
lecture on " Heroes and Hero-Worshiii," crowd 
"nto a nutshell the substance of his beUef. It was 



translator's preface. xiii 



a belief of actions, not of words. He cared little 
or nothing for what a man professed, unless what 
he said was corroborated by what he did. The 
performing of one's duty was the chief, the ^dtal 
thing in this life. " Too much thinking and not 
enough doing " was a favourite saying of his. 

In a letter to Dr. Fliigel from Mr. Froude, 
he says : " Your admirable little book is the first 
sign I have seen of an independent and clear 
insight into Carlyle's life, work and character, 
as it will one day be universally recognised by 
all mankind. Leaving out Goethe, Carlyle was 
indisputably the greatest man (if you measure 
gi-eatness by the permanent effect he has and will 
produce on the mind of mankind) who has ap- 
peared in Europe for centuries. You have seen 
into this and know to appreciate it. His charac- 
ter was as remarkable as his intellect. There has 
been no man at all, not Goethe himself, who in 
thought and action was so consistently true to his 
noblest instincts." 

A word is needed with reference to the transla- 
tion of this book, and certain alterations and 
omissions which have been made. 

It was thought best to omit Part I, the Appen- 
dix, and most of the Notes, which deal almost 
exclusively with facts in Carlyle's life so familiar 
from an American point of view, and, moreover 



xiv translator's preface. 

so tliorouglily well treated by Froucle, Norton, 
Eichard Garnett and others, that it would be like 
offering coals to Newcastle to offer them to an 
American reading public. 

The translation has also been carefully examined 
by the Author, thus removing, in a measure, much 
responsibility in regard to it ; but the final de- 
cision as to a choice of English expressions, rest- 
ed with the translator, who has to thank, as well 
as the Author, Mr. Albert Miller, of Detroit, 
Michigan, for kind assistance. 

J. G. T. 
Ithaca, N. Y., 

Jan. 2Qth, 1891. 



AUTHOK'S PKEFACE. 



"From the 'silence of the eternities,' of which he so often 
spoke, there still sound, and will long sound, the tones of that 
marvellous voice."— Dean Stanleys sermon on the occasion of 
the Death of Mr. Carlyle. 

" Suffer me, then, to say a few words on the 
good seed which he has sown in our hearts " were 
the words of Dean Stanley in his impressive 
funeral sermon on Carlyle, which was deUvercd 
on the 6th of February, 1881, in Westminster 
Abbey — and these words express the feeling which 
has actuated the undertaking of the present work. 

In England, Carlyle's views of hfo have often 
been made the subject of inquiry, but they have 
either been scattered in periodical publications, 
or have been partially colored, or could hold 
no claim of having been scientifically treated, 
which means nothing more, in biography, at least, 
than a clear and conscientious arrangement of 
matter. In Germany, Carlyle's views of Hfe have 
generally been Uttle considered. We AvilHngly 
praised him, and praise him now, as the friend 
of our nation, the admii'er of our distinguished 
men, but with that the whole matter ended, with 
but few exceptions. 



XVI AUTHOR S PREFACE. 

Since the appearance of Fronde's great biog- 
raphy, and since the Carlyle archives have re- 
vealed their treasures, it has become our duty 
to gather together in part the results of these in- 
vestigations ; and to accomplish this in the de- 
partment in which Carlyle's principal work is of 
importance for his people and literatiu'e in gen- 
eral was the serious endeavor of the Author. 

He has first to express his thanks to Llr. 
Froude, who, through his great Life of Carlyle, 
was the incentive to the present work, also to the 
estimable friend of Carlyle, Professor David Mas- 
son, and lastly, and above all, for her wiUinguess 
to render assistance and information, to the niece 
of Carlyle, who, in truest solicitude, made the 
last years of the great man's hfe easier and more 
beautiful. 

Before concluding these remarks, the name of 
Eichard Garnett, which is familiar to all who have 
worked in the British Museum, calls to mind a 
small work on Carlyle, which gives in its conclud- 
ing chapter a short but excellent pictui'e of Car- 
lyle's views. I should like to recommend the 
reading of this chapter, as well as of the whole 
work, where the bibliogiaphy of Carlyle has been 
arranged in its best form. 

TTei^enhaus, Baschwitz, near Leipzig, 
November, 1887. 



AUTHOK'S INTEODUCTION. 



Near the Scotch country town, Ayr, about an 
hour from the sea shore, stands a poor little hut, 
which one hundred and fifty years ago received 
its light through a single window that was not 
much larger than a quaiier of a sheet of paper, 
when " Genius " made an entrance into it, and 
Robert Burns was born. What the interior of 
the peasant's hut could not offer, the blossom- 
ing son of the poet found in the charming sur- 
roundings of the paternal home. 

One can indeed feel, when one stands upon the 
Auld Brig o' Doon and looks back to the old 
times, how the boy's di-eamy and poetical nature 
was inspired ; and if one approaches the ivy- 
covered ruins of Alloway Kirk and the old ceme- 
tery, the wanderer is filled with awe, as was once 
the good Tam o' Shanter. 

Much more rugged are the surroundings of 
another Scotch hamlet, situated several miles 
southward. A single country road guides the 
traveller — and hundreds make pilgrimages yearly 
to this Httle village — to a very poor-looking house. 



XVm AUTHORS INTRODUCTION. 

into which, five years before the expiration of the 
eighteenth century, another " Genius " made en- 
trance, and Thomas Carlyle was born. 

One is invohmtarily compelled to compare the 
straightened circumstances in which both men 
were born, and from which one of them was never 
permitted for long to raise himself, but from which 
the other became brilliantly transformed through 
unheard-of strength of will and unceasing indus- 
try — through a strength of will which the other, 
unfortunately, lacked. 

The career of both men was a tragedy. If we 
approach in spirit the death-bed of Burns in the 
forlorn house at Dumfries, and reflect upon what 
more this genius might have done for the world 
and himself ; what he, indeed, owed the world 
and himself ; what divine power in him still wait- 
ed for full maturity, — or, if we enter the death - 
chamber in Chejne Row, where the heart of a 
hero burst with a sigh — a hero who, to be sure, 
accompHshed everything which in a long and 
checkered life he had been able to accomplish 
before God and man ; we stand by the bier of a 
man who, with the greatest warmth of heart, with 
the greatest strength of intellect, although his life 
was spent in the most assiduous labor, was never 
long happy. 

But, as with Burns, in the termination of Car- 



AUTHOR S INTRODUCTION. XIX 

lyle's powerful life, there is no discord. Earnest 
regrets till the heart, but they bring their ovm 
reconciliation, as true tragedy always does. I 
hope to be able in what follows to point out the 
subUmity of Carlyle's spiritual life — a sublimity 
from which, as from a lofty mountain, the eye 
discerns far and near numberless beautiful val- 
leys — a sublimity from which the soul itself feels 
freer and larger. 

Goethe recognized clearly the characteristic of 
Carlyle's aspirations when he uttered on July 
25th, 1827, the following words : " It is especially 
admirable in Carlyle, that in his criticism of our 
German wi'iters he recognises the spiritual and 
moral kernel as the most efficacious. He is, in- 
deed, a moral force of great significance. There 
is a great future awaiting him, and it is not at all 
possible to predict what ho will be able to accom- 
pUsh." 

And to consider Carlyle as a " moral force " is 
the object of this book. Before we turn our atten- 
tion, however, to an explanation of his moral and 
religious views, it seems to me appropriate to con- 
sider for a moment the history of his inner life, 
especially with reference to its moral and religious 
side. 

The inner life of Carlyle divides itself into three 
great epochs : first, his youth, which embraced 



XX author's introduction. 

the years spent in the paternal home and in Edin- 
burgh (to the year 1816) ; second, those years 
which might properly be called his apprentice- 
ship, when he began to fight the battles with his 
own nature in Kirkcaldy, the chief fruit of which 
is his acquaintance with the German classics ; and 
third, the long and important period of his Hfe 
which begins about the time of his departure to 
London in 1834, and ends with his death there in 
1881. 

From 1834 to 1881 are the richest years of liis 
life, and show to the world how Goethe's pro- 
phetic word was to be fulfilled. 



THOMAS CflRLYLE'S MORAL AND RELIGIOUS 
DEVELOPMENT. 



CHAPTER I. 
CABLYLE'S BELIEF. 

In " Sartor Resartus," Professor Teufelsdi'ockh, 
of Weissnichtwo, imparts the follo^ving ideas : 

" With men of a speculative turn there come 
seasons — meditative, sweet, yet awful hours — 
when, in wonder and fear, you ask yourself that 
unanswerable question : Who am I ; the thing 
that can say, I ? 

" The world, with its loud trafficing, retires 
into the distance, and through the paper-hang- 
ings and stone walls, and thick-pUed tissue of 
Commerce and Pohty, and all the li^dng and 
Hfeless integuments (of Society and a Body) 
wherewith your existence sits surrounded, — the 
sight reaches forth into the void Deep, and you 



24 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

are alone with the Universe, and silently com- 
mune wdth it, as one mysterious Presence with 
another. 

""Who am I? ^Tiat is this Me? A voice, a 
motion, an appearance, — some embodied, visual- 
ised Idea in the Eternal Mind ? Cogito, ergo siim. 
Alas, poor Cogitator, this takes us but a little 
way. Sure enough, I am ; and lately was not ; 
but "V^Tionce ? How ? Where to ? The answer 
lies around, written in all colors and motions, 
uttered in all tones of jubilee and wail, in thou- 
sand-figured, thousand-voiced harmonious Nature : 
but where is the cunning eye and ear to whom 
that God-^\Titten Apocah-jise will yield articulate 
meaning ? We sit as in a boundless phantasma- 
goria and dream-grotto ; l)oundless, for the paint- 
ed star, the remotest century, lies not even nearer 
the verge thereof : sounds and many-coloured 
idsions flit around our sense ; but Him, the Un- 
slumbering, whose work both dream and dreamer 
are, we see not ; except in half -waking moments, 
suspect not. 

" Creation, says one, Hes before us, like a glori- 
ous rainbow ; but the sun that made it, hes be- 
hind us, hidden from us. Then in that strange 
dream,- how we clutch at shadows as if they were 
substance ; and sleep deepest while fancying our- 
selves most awake ! 



caelyle's belief. !25 

" "Wliicli of your philosophical systems is other 
than a dream-theorem — a net quotient, confi- 
dently given out, where di\dsor and dividend are 
both unknown ? " * 

" To the eye of vulgar logic, what is man ? An 
omnivorous biped that wears breeches. To the 
eye of pure reason, what is he? A soul, a spirit, 
a divine apparition. Eound his mysterious Me 
there lies, under all those wool-rags, a Gar- 
ment of Flesh (or of Senses) contextured in the 
Loom of Heaven ; whereby he is revealed to 
his hke, and dwells with them in Union and 
Di^-ision ; and sees and fashions for himself a 
Universe, A\ath azure Starry Spaces, and long 
Thousands of Years. Deep-hidden is he under 
that Strange Garment ; amid Sounds and Col- 
ours and Forms, as it were, swathed-in, and 
inextricably over-shrouded : yet it is sky-woven 
and worthy of a God. Stands he not thereby 
in the centre of Immensities, in the conflux of 
Eternities ? 

" He feels ; the power has been given him to 
know, to believe ; nay, does not the spirit of love, 
free in its primeval brightness, even here, though 
but for garments, look through ? Well said Saint 
Chrysostom, with his lips of gold : ' the true She- 
kinah is man.' Where else is the God's Presence 



* Sartor Resartus, p. 35. 



26 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

manifested not to oiu' eyes onlv, but to our 
hearts, as in ovir fellow-man ? " - 

"For the rest," continues Carlyle, "as is natural 
to a man of this kind. Professor Teufelsdiockh 
deals much in the feehng of wonder ; insists on 
the necessity of high worth of universal Won- 
der ; which he holds to be the only reasonable 
temper for the denizen of so singular a Planet 
as ours." t 

" "Wonder," says he, " is the basis of Worship : 
the reign of Wonder is perennial, indestructible 
in Man ; only at cei-tain stages (as the present) 
it is, for some short season, a reign in j)a?'fibus 
injiddiurn. That progi-ess of science, which is 
to destroy Wonder, and in its stead substitute 
Mensuration and Numeration liuds small favour 
with Teufelsdrockh, much as he otherwise vener- 
ates these two latter processes. 

" Shall your Science," exclaims he, " proceed 
in the small chink-lighted, or even oil-lighted, 
undergiound workshop of Logic alone, and man's 
mind become an Arithmetical Mill, whereof Mem- 
ory is the Hopper, and mere Tables of Lines and 
Tangents, Codifications, and Treatises of what you 
call Political Economy, are the Meal ? And what 
is that Science, which the scientific head alone, 



* Sartor Resartiis, p. i-i. 
I Op. cit., p. 45. 



CARLYLES BELIEF. 27 

were it screwed off, and (like the Doctor's in the 
Arabian Tale) set in a basin to keep it alive, conld 
proseciite without shadow of a heart, — but one 
other of the mechanical and menial handicrafts, 
for which the Scientific Head (having a Soul in 
it) is too noble an organ ? 

" I mean that Thought without Reverence is 
barren, perhaps poisonous ; at best, dies like 
cookery, with the day that called it forth ; does 
not hve, like so^^'ing, in successive tilths and 
wider-spreading harvests, bringing food and plen- 
teous increase to all Time. In such wise does 
Teufelsdrockh deal hits, harder or softer, accord- 
ing to ability ; yet ever, as we would fain per- 
suade ourselves, with charitable intent. Above 
all, that class of Logic-choppers, and treble-pipe 
Scoffers, and professed Enemies to Wonder, who, 
in these days, so numerously patrol as night 
constables about the Mechanic's Institute of 
Science, and cackle, like Old-Roman geese and 
goslings round their Capitol, on any alarm, or 
on none ; nay, who often, as illuminated Sceptics, 
walk abroad into peaceable society, in full day- 
light, with rattle and lantern, and insist on guid- 
ing you and guarding you there-vvith, though the 
Sun is shining, and the street populous with 
mere justice -lo\ing men : that whole class is in- 



28 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

expressiblj wearisome to him. Hear Avitli what 
uncommon animation he perorates : 

" ' The man who cannot wonder, who does 
not habitually wonder (and worship), were he 
President of innumerable Eoval Societies, and 
carried the whole Mechanique Celeste and HegeVs 
Philosophy, and the epitome of all Laboratories 
and Observatories, with their results, in his single 
liead, — is but a Pau' of Spectacles behind which 
there is no Eye. Let those who have Eyes look 
through him, then he may be useful. Thou wilt 
have no Mystery or Mysticism ; wilt walk through 
thv world bv the sunshine of what thou callest 
Truth, or even by the hand lamp of what I call 
Attorney -Logic ; and 'explain' all, 'account' for 
all, or beheve nothing of it ? Nay, thou wilt 
attempt laughter ; whoso recognises the un- 
fathomable, all-pervading domain of Mystery, 
which is everywhere under our feet and among 
our hands ; to whom the Universe is an Oracle 
and Temple, as well as a Kitchen and Cattle- 
stall, — he shall be a delirious Mystic ; to him 
thou, with sniffing charity, wilt protrusivcly proller 
thy hand-lamp, and shriek, as one injured, when 
he kicks his foot through it? Ainner Teufel! 
Doth not thy cow calve ? Doth not thy bull 
gender ? Thou thyself, weii thou not born ; 
wilt thou not die ? ' Explain ' me all this, or 



caelyle's belief. 29 

do one of two things: Retire into private places 
with thy foolish cackle ; or, what were better, 
give it lip and weep, not that the reign of 
wonder is done, and God's world all disembel- 
lished and prosaic, but that thou hitherto art a 
Dilettante and sand-blind Pedant.' " * 

Carlyle characterizes Teufelsdrcickh's doctrines 
as " Natural Supernaturalism " which might be 
said to lie at the foundation of his own views 
of Ufe, which, however, we prefer to denominate 
" Religious Ideahsm," for it is an idealism in 
which a theological and religious principle plays 
a very important part. 

AVe must cite a few more passages from this 
chapter on " Natural Supernaturalism " in order 
to give, as far as is possible in his own words, 
an accurate idea of the essence of his belief. 

Teufelsdrockh deals severely with these philo- 
sophical world expounders, and discourses at 
length on the physical and incomj)rehensiblo 
" laws " of the universe, attempting to explain 
what those same unalterable laws — " forming the 
complete statute-book of nature may possibly be." 

" They stand wiitten in our works of science, 
say you ; in the accumulated record of man's 
experience ! Was man with his experience pre- 
sent at the creation, then, to see how it all 



* Sartor Eesartus, p. -17. 



30 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

went on ? Have any deepest scientific iudividnals 
yet dived down to the foundations of the uni- 
verse, and gauged ever\ihing there? Did the 
Maker take them into His counsel ; that they 
read His grouud-jilan of the incomprehensible 
All ; and can say, This stands marked therein, 
and no more than this? Alas, not in anywise! 
These scientific individuals have been nowhere 
but where Ave also are ; have seen some hand- 
breadths deeper than we see into the Deep that 
is infinite, without bottom as without shore. 

" Laplace's Book on the Stars, wherein he ex- 
hiliits that certain Planets, Avith their Satellites, 
gATate round our Sun, at a rate and in a course, 
by greatest good fortune, he and the like of him 
have succeeded in detecting, — is to me as precious 
as to another. But is this Avhat thou namest 
' Mechanism of the Heavens,' and ' Systems of 
the "World ; ' this, wherein Sirius and the Pleiades, 
and all Herschel's fifteen thousand Suns per min- 
ute, being left out, some paltry handfuls of Moons, 
and inei-t Balls, had been — looked at, nick-named, 
and marked in the Zodiacal Way-bill ; so that we 
can now prate of their Whereabout ; their How, 
their AVhy, their "What being hid from us, as in 
the signless Inane ? 

" System of Nature ! To the wisest man, wide 
as is his vision, Nature remains of quite injiidte 



caelyle's belief. 31 

depth, of quite infinite expansion ; and all ex- 
perience thereof limits itself to some few com- 
puted centuries and mc^asured square miles. 
. . . . We speak of the Volume of Nature : 
and truly a Volume it is, — whose author and 
writer is God. To read it ! Dost thou, does 
man, so much as well know the Alphabet thereof? 
With its Words, Sentences, and grand descriptive 
Pages, poetical and philosophical, spread out 
through Solar Systems, and Thousands of Years, 
we shall not try thee. It is a Volume written 
in celestial hieroglyphs, in the true Sacred wi'it- 
ing ; of which even Prophets are happy that they 
can read here a line and there a Une. As for 
your Institutes, and Academies of Science, they 
strive bravely ; and, fi*om amid the thick-crowded, 
inextricably iutert^\istcd liierogl}'pliic Aniting, 
pick out by dextrous combination, some Letters 
in the vulgar Character, and therefrom put to- 
gether this and the other economic Recipe, of 
high avail in Practice. That Nature is more than 
some boundless Volume of such Recipes, or huge, 
well-nigh inexhaustible Domestic Cookery Book, 
of which the whole secret mil in this manner 
one day evolve itself, the fewest dream." * 

Teufelsdrockh-Carlyle then speaks of those " il- 
lusory appearances, the two grand fundamental 



* Sartor Kesartus, pp. 177-180. 



32 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

world-enveloping Appearances, Space and Time. 
These, as spun and woven for ns from Birth itself, 
to clothe our celestial Me for dwelling here, and 
yet to blind it, — lie all-embracing, as the universal 
canvas, or warp and woof, whereby all minor 
Illusions, in this Phantasm Existence, weave and 
paint themselves. In vain, while hc^re on earth, 
shall you endeavor to strip them oflf; you can, 
at best, but rend them asunder for moments, 
and look through." * 

" Is the Past annihilated, then, or only past ; 
is the Future non-extant, or onlv future ? Those 
mystic faculties of thine, Memory and Hope, 
akeady answer : already through those mystic 
avenues, thou, the Earth-blinded, summonest both 
Past and Future, and communest with them, 
though as yet darkly, and with mute beckonings. 
The curtains of Yesterday drop down, the cur- 
tains of To-morrow roll up ; but Yesterday and 
To-morrow lioth are. Pierce through the Time- 
element, glance into the Eternal. Believe what 
thou tindest written in the sanctuaries of Man's 
Soul, even as all Thinkers, in all ages, have 
devoutly read it there : that Time and Space are 
not God, but creations of God ; that with God, 
as it is a universal Here, so is it an everlasting 
Kow. 



* Sartor Kesartus, pp. 177-180. 



carlyle's belief. 33 

"And seest thou therein any gUmpse of Im- 
moriality ? O Heaven ! Is the white tomb of 
our loved one, who died from our arms, and had 
to be left behind us there, which rises in the 
distance, Uke a pale, mournfully-receeding Mile- 
stone, to tell how many toilsome uncheered miles 
we have journeyed on alone, — but a pale spectral 
Illusion ! Is the lost Friend still mysteriously 
Here, even as we are Here mysteriously, with 
God ! — know of a truth that only the Time-shad- 
ows have perished, or are perishable ; that the 
real Being of whatever was, and whatever is, and 
whatever will be, is even now and forever. This, 
should it unhappily seem new, thou mayest pon- 
der at thy leisure ; for the next twenty years, or 
the next twenty centuries : believe it thou must ; 

understand it thou canst not Sweep 

away the Illusion of Time O, could 

I (with the Time-annihilating Hat) transport 
thee direct from the Beginnings to the Endings, 
how were thy eyesight unsealed, and thy heart 
set flaming in the Light-sea of celestial wonder ! 
Then sawest thou that this fair Universe, were 
it in the meanest province thereof, is in very 
deed the Star-domed City of God ; that through 
every star, through every grass-blade, and 
most through every Living Soul, the glory of a 
present God still beams. But Nature, which is 



34 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

the Time-vesture of God, and reveals Him to 
the wase, hides Him from the foohsh." * 

Caiiyle then strolls into the spirit-world and 
returns with the witty and profound discovery 
that in order to see a " real ghost," Dr. Johnson 
did not need to go to the trouble of searching 
spirit-haunted Cock Lane, to clamber upon church 
vaults and tap at midnight upon coffins — all with- 
out result, of course. " Did he never, with the 
mind's eye, as well as with the body's, look 
around him into that full tide of human life he so 
loved ; did he never so much as look into himself ? 
The good Doctor was a Ghost, as actual and au- 
thentic as heart could wish ; well nigh a million 
Ghosts were travelling the streets by his side. 
Once more I say, sweep away the illusion of 
Time ; compress the threescore years into three 
minutes ; what else was he, what else are we ? 
Are we not Spirits, that are shaped into a 
body, into an Appearance; and that fade away 
again into air and InvisibiUty ? This is no meta- 
phor, it is a simple scientific fact: we start out 
of Nothingness, take figure, and are Apparitions ; 
round us, as around the veriest spectre, is Eter- 
nity ; and to Eternity minutes are as years and 
feons." t 



* Sartor Eesartus, p. 183. 
I Loc. cit. 



carlyle's belief. 35 

" O Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to 
consider that we not only carry each a future 
Ghost within him ; but are in very deed, Ghosts ! 
These Umbs, whence had we them ; this stormy 
Force ; this life-blood with its burning Passion ? 
They are dust and shadow ; a Shadow-system 
gathered round our Me ; wherein, through some 
moments or years, the Divine Essence is to be 
revealed in the Flesh." * 

" Thus, like a God-created, fire-breathing, Spirit- 
host, we emerge from the Inane ; haste storm- 
fuUy across the astonished Earth ; then plunge 
again into the Inane. Earth's mountains are lev- 
elled, and her seas filled vip, in our passage : can 
the Earth, which is but dead and a vision, resist 
Spirits which have reality and are aUve ? On the 
hardest adamant some foot-print of us is stamped- 
in ; the last Rear of the host will read traces of 
the earhest Van. But whence ? O Heaven, 
whither? Sense knows not; Faith knows not; 
only that it is through Mystery to Mystery, from 
God and to God. 

" ' We are suck stufE 
As dreams are made of, and our little Life 
Is rounded with a sleep ! ' " f 

" Man begins in darkness, ends in darkness ; 
mystery is everywhere around us and in us, under 

* Sartor Kesartus, p. 184. 
t Op. cit. pp. 184-185. 



36 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

our feet, among our hands. Nevertheless, so 
much has become evident to every one, that this 
wondrous Mankind is advancing somewhither; 
that at least all human things are, have been, and 
forever will be, in Movement and Change." " 

" Sad, truly, were our condition did we know 
but this : that Change is universal and inevitable. 
Launched into a dark shoreless sea of Pprhon- 
ism, what would remain for us but to sail aimless, 
hopeless ; or make madly merry, while the de- 
vouring Death had not yet ingulfed us ? As, in- 
deed, we have seen many, and yet see many do. 
Nevertheless, so stands it not. 

" The venerator of the Past (and to what pure 
heart is the Past, in that ' moonlight of memory,' 
other than sad and holy?) sorrows not over its 
departure, as one utterly bereaved. The true 
Past departs not, nothing that was worthy in the 
Past departs ; no Truth or Goodness realised by 
man ever dies, or can die ; but is all still here, 
and, recognised or not ; lives and works through 
endless changes. If all things, to speak in the 
German dialect, are discerned by us, and exist 
for us, in an element of Time, and therefore of 
Mortality and Mutability ; yet Time itself reposes 
on Eternity : the truly Great and Transcendental 



* Essay on Characteristics, p, 33. 



carlyle's belief. 37 

has its basis and substance in Eternity ; stands 
revealed to us as Eternity in a vesture of Time." * 

" Unhappy he who felt not, at all conjunctures, 
ineradicably in his heart the knowledge that a 
God made this Universe, and a Demon not ! And 
shall Evil always prosper, then ? Out of all Evil 
comes Good ; and no Good that is possible but 
shall one day be real. Deep and sad as is our 
feeling that we stand yet in the bodeful Night ; 
equally deep, indestructible is our assurance that 
the Morning also will not fail. Nay, already, as 
we look round, streaks of a day-spring are in the 
east ; it is da"s\'ning ; when the time shall be ful- 
filled, it will be day. The progress of men to- 
ward higher and nobler developments of whatever 
is highest and noblest in him, lies not only pro- 
phecied to Faith, but now written to the eye of 
Observation, so that he who runs may read." t 

" For the rest, let that vain struggle to read the 
mystery of the Infinite cease to harass us. It is 
a mystery which, through all ages, we shall only 
read here a line of, there another line of. Do we 
not ah-eady know that the name of the Infinite is 
Lord, is God ? Here on Earth we are as Soldiers, 
, fighting in a foreign laud ; that understand not 
the plan of the campaign, and have no need to 



* Essay on Chai'acteristics, pp. 33-34. 
fOp. cit., p. 32. 



38 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

understand it ; seeing well "svliat is at our hand to 
be done. Let us do it like Soldiers ; with sub- 
mission, with courage, with a heroic joy. ' What- 
soever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy 
might.' Behind us, behind each one of us, lie 
Six Thousand Years of human effort, human con- 
quest : before us in the boundless Time, with its, 
as yet, uncreated and iinconquered Continents 
and Eldorados, which we, even we, have to con- 
quer, to create ; and from the bosom of Eternity 
there shine for us celestial guiding stars. 

' Mj' inheritance, how wide and fair ! 

Time is my fair seed-field, of Time I'm heir.' " * 

These thoughts and many more which might 
be found in Carlyle's ^\Titings, contain the kernel 
of his religious belief. 

The Universe, as we see it everywhere, is an 
infinite and divine mystery — an infinite and divine 
mystery are we ourselves, as we perceive the 
world and its phenomena confronting us. The 
only thing which we — a revelation of God — are 
able to perceive of the other revelation of God, 
the universe, is reverence, and worship of the 
Divine Being. This " "Worship " before the 
Highest — as it has manifested itself in our souls 
and everywhere in the world is religion ; rehgion, 



Essay on Characteristics, p. 38. 



carlyle's belief. 39 

which not alone fills our souls as a sentiment, but 
shows itself as well in our life and works, and is 
inseparably bound with the highest moral beauty 
which is to have a sequel hereafter. That is the 
foundation of Carlyle's views, his belief, with 
which the man and all his works are permeated. 
From this belief spring all his thoughts and judg- 
ments ; upon this foundation rests his view of 
the world, and all questions, solved or unsolved, 
which are daily agitating men's minds who crave 
an honest and intelligent answer, and without 
which, in one way or another, they may be 
brought to great discontent 



CHAPTER II. 
THE MECHANICAL AGE. 

Motto: "The marvels of Industry did not awe him, the 
progress of humanity he did not place in the triumph of matter 
in his eyes a man -was a man only on condition of being a taber- 
nacle of the living God." — " Wylie's Carlyle," chap. 24. 

Carlyle's Religious Idealism is now found con- 
fronted by a " mechanical age ; " an age swayed 
by a sort of spiritual and physical machine ; an 
age, which sutlers from the fact that its noble 
impulses are no longer brought out with freedom, 
naturally and unconsciously, without regard to 
consequences and criticism, but rather reach for- 
ward toward an independent and imagined end ; 
not to that one end, which for Carlyle is the only 
one, the kingdom of God on Earth. 

That Carlyle, although perhaps too inexorable 
in his antagonism to mechanical things, is not 
blind to the results which the progi'ess in tech- 
nical and other sciences has wrought for man- 
kind, cannot be denied ; nevertheless he believed 



THE MECHANICAL AGE. 41 

his chief mission to be in mercilessly attacking 
the experiments of the mechanical mind in dar- 
ing to interfere with fields with which it has no 
concern ; viz., the fields of a higher, spiritual and 
moral life, and, above all, in the field of Ee- 

ligion In theology, philosophy and 

pedagogy, as in all the sciences and arts, he 
sees the pernicious increase of a mechanical 
view of life. 

" Thus we have machines for Education ; Lan- 
castrian machines ; Hamiltonian machines ; mon- 
itors, etc. Instruction, that mysterious commun- 
ing of Wisdom with Ignorance, is no longer an 
indefinable tentative process, requiring a study 
of individual aptitudes, and a perpetual variation 
of means and methods, to attain the same end ; 
but a secure, universal, straight-forward business, 
to be conducted in the gross by proper mechan- 
ism, with such intellect as comes to hand. Then 
we have Religious machines; of all imaginable 
varieties; the Bible-Society, professing a far 
higher and heavenly structure, is found, on in- 
quiry, to be altogether an earthly contrivance ; 
supported by collection of moneys, by fomenting 
of vanities, by puffing, by intrigue and chicane ; 
a machine for converting the Heathen. It is the 
same in all other departments. Has any man, or 
any society of men a truth to speak, a piece of 



42 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

spiritual work to do, they can no wise proceed 
at once and with, the mere natural organs, but 
must first call a public meeting, appoint com- 
mittees, issue prospectuses, eat a public dinner." '^ 

"With individuals, in like manner, natural 
strength avails little. No individual now hopes 
to accomplish the poorest enterprise single-handed 
and without mechanical aids. He must make in- 
terest with some existing corporation, and till his 
fields with their oxen. 

" In these days, more emphatically than ever, 
' to live, signifies to unite ^\'ith a party, or to 
make one.' Philosophy, Science, Ai't, Literature, 
all depend on machinery. No Newton, by silent 
meditation, now discovers the System of the World 
from the falling of an apple ; but some quite other 
than Ne's\'ton stands in his Museum, his Scientific 
Institution, and behind whole batteries of retorts, 
digestors and galvanic piles imperatively ' interro- 
gates Nature,' — who, however, shows no haste to 
answer. In defect of Raphaels, and Angelos, and 
Mozarts, we have Royal Academies of Painting, 
Sculpture, Music ; whereby the languishing Spirit 
of Art may be strengthened, as by the more gen- 
erous diet of a Public Kitchen. Literature, too, 
has its Paternoster-row of mechanism, its Trade 



* Essay on Signs of the Times, p. 234. 



THE MECHANICAL AGE. 43 

dinners, its Editorial conclaves, and huge sub- 
terranean, puffing bellows ; so that books are not 
only j)rinted, but in a great measure written and 

sold by machinery Men are grown 

mechanical in head and in heart, as well as in 
hand. They have lost faith in individual endea- 
vour, and in natural force of any kind. Not for 
internal perfection, but for external combinations 
and arrangements, for institutions, constitutions, — 
for Mechanism of one sort or other, do they hope 
and struggle." * 

In what follows an attempt will be made to give 
an idea of Carlyle's position with reference to the 
several departments of spiritual life, which, under 
the influence of Mechanism, have more or less 
suffered. 



* Essay on Signs of the Times, pp. 235-236. 



CHAPTEE III. 

CABLYLE'S RELATION TO CHEISTI- 

ANITY. 

1. — His Views on the Peesonauty of Christ. 
2. — His Appeehension of the Significance of CHEisxiANrry 
in the World's History. 
3. — His Notion of the Natuee of Chbistianity. 

" To begin mtli our highest Spiritual function, 
with Eeligion," says Carljle, "we might ask, 
Whither has EeHgion now tied? Of churches 
and tlieir estabHshments we here say nothing; 
nor of the unhappy domains of UnbeUef, and how 
innumerable men, blinded in their minds, have 
crown to live without God in the world ; but, 
taking the fairest side of the matter, we ask. What 
is the nature of that same Eehgion, which still 
linirers in the hearts of the few, who are called, 
and call themselves, specially the Eeligious ? Is 
it a healthy religion, vital, unconscious of itself ; 
that shines forth spontaneously in doing of the 
Work, or even in preaching of the Word ? Un- 



CARLYLE's relation to CHRISTIANITY. 45 

happily, No. Instead of heroic martyr Conduct, 
and inspired and soul-inspiring Eloquence, where- 
by Religion itself were brought home to our living 
bosoms, to live and reign there, we have ' Dis- 
cources on the Evidences,' endeavouring, with 
small results, to make it probable that such a 
thing as Eehgion exists. The most enthusiastic 
Evangelicals do not preach a Gospel, but keep 
describing how it should and might be preached. 
To awaken the sacred fire of faith, as by a sacred 
contagion, is not their endeavour, but, at most, 
to describe how Faith shows and acts, and scien- 
tifically distinguish true Faith from false. Ee- 
hgion, like all else, is conscious of itself, listens 
to itself ; it becomes less and less creative, vital ; 
more and more mechanical. Considered as a 
whole, the Christian Religion of late years has 
been continually dissipating itself into Metaphy- 
sics ; and threatens now to disappear, as some 
rivers do in deserts of barren sand." * 

The preceding words have already suggested 
from what quarter Carlyle's position Avith reference 
to Clu'istianity may be expected. 

We shall next consider his position as to the 
personality of Christ and the historical signifi- 
cance of Christianity. 



* Characteristics, p. 20. 



46 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

When Goethe on the 11th of March, 1832 
(Eckerm, iii., 255) gives utterance to the following 
sentiment : " I consider the Gospels entirely gen- 
uine, for there is in them an image of a powerful 
grandeur which proceeds from the person of 
Christ and in so godUke a manner as only upon 
earth the Godlike has been revealed. If one 
asks me whether it may be in my nature to feel 
reverence and devotion to him, I answer, to be 
sure. I bow before him as before the highest 
revelation, the highest principle of morality," and 
when on the same day he says, "may spiritual 
culture advance, may the natural sciences grow 
broader and deeper, and the human spirit expand 
as it will, it will never be surpassed by the grand- 
eur and moral development of Christianity as it 
glistens and sparkles in the Gospels ; " and when 
Goethe crowns these expressions with the words, 
" We shall all of us come gradually out of a 
Christianity of words and belief to a Christianity 
of principle and action," it is in order that Car- 
lyle's own conviction of the worth and the sig- 
nificance of the fixture of Christianity may also 
find expression. Carlyle's religious feeling be- 
came completely imbued with the teaching and 
character of Christ. 

Carlyle never spoke a word which permitted of 
a double meaning, which did not show the com- 



CARLYLE's relation to CHRISTIANITY. 47 

plete conviction of his heart, and in the following 
plain language he expresses his belief in Christ : 
" Highest of all Symbols are those wherein the 
Artist or Poet has risen into Prophet, and all men 
can recognise a present God and worship the 
same. . . . Various enough have been such 
religious Symbols, what we call IteUgious ; as men 
stood in this stage of culture or the other, and 
could worse or better body-forth the Godlike : 
some Symbols with a transient intrinsic worth ; 
many with only an extrinsic. If thou ask to what 
height man has carried it in this manner, look 
on one divinest Symbol : on Jesus of Nazareth, 
and his Life, and his Biography, and what fol- 
lowed therefrom. Higher has the human Thought 
not yet reached ; This is Christianity and Christ- 
endom, a Symbol of quite perennial, infinite 
character ; whose significance will ever demand 
to be anew inquired into, and anew made mani- 
fest." * 

" Small it is that thou canst trample the Earth 
under thy feet, as old Greek Zeno trained thee : 
thou canst love the Earth while it injures thee, 
and even because it injui'es thee ; for this a 
Greater than Zeno was needed, and he, too, was 
sent. Knowest thou that ' Worship of Sorrow ? ' 



* Sartor Kesartus, p. 155. 



48 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

The Temple thereof, founded some eighteen cen- 
turies ago, now lies in ruins, overgrown with 
jungle, the habitation of doleful creatures : never- 
theless, venture forward ; in a low crypt, arched 
out of falling fragments, thou findest the Altar 
still there, and its sacred Lamp perennially burn- 
ing."* 

The essence of the Christian doctrine for Car- 
lyle is raised above all doubt and every logical 
proof, it is implanted in every human heart, and 
whether "in the believing or unbelieving mind, 
must ever be regarded as the crowning glory, or 
rather the hfe and soul, of our whole modern 
culture ! " t 

And just for this reason Carlyle never became 
tired of pointing out the untenableness of even 
the most earnest essays to defend or assault the 
Christian doctrine with the help of logic. 

In his Essay on Voltaire we find these words : 
" That the Christian Religion could have any 
deeper foundation than Books, could possibly be 
written in the purest nature of man, in mysteri- 
ous, inefi'aceable characters, to which Books, and 
all Revelations and authentic traditions, were but 
a sul)sidiary matter, were but as the light where- 
by that divine icriting was to be read ; — nothing 



* Sartor Eesartus, p. 133. 
t Signs of the Times, p 242. 



CAELYLE's relation to CHRISTIANITY. 49 

of tliis seems, even in tlie faintest manner, to 
have occurred to Voltaire. Yet, herein, as we 
believe that the whole world has now begun to 
discover, lies the real essence of the question ; 
by the negative or affirmative decision of which, 
the Christian Keligion, anything that is worth 
caUing by that name, must fall, or endure forever. 
We believe, also, that the wiser minds of our 
age have aheady come to agreement in this ques- 
tion ; or rather never were divided regarding it. 
Christianity, the * Worship of Sorrow,' has been 
recognised as divine, on far other grounds than 
'Essays on Miracles,' and by consideration in- 
finitely deeper than would avail in any mere 
'trial by jury.' He who argues against it, or for 
it, in this manner, may be regarded as mistak- 
ing its nature, * . . . . Our fathers were 
wiser than we, when they said, in the deepest 
seriousness, what we often hear in shallow mock- 
ery, that Rehgion is ' not of Sense, but of Faith ; ' 
not of Understanding, but of Reason. He who 
finds himself without the latter, who by all his 
studying has failed to unfold it in himself, may 
have studied to great or little purpose, we say 
not which ; but of the Christian Rehgion, as of 
many other things, he has and can have no 



* Essay on Voltaire, p. 172. 



50 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

knowledge. The Cliristian Doctrine we often 
hear likened to the Greek Philosophy, and found, 
on all hands, some measurable way superior to 
it : but this also seems a mistake. The Christian 
Doctrine, that Doctrine of Humanity, in aU senses 
Godlike, and the parent of all Godlike virtues, 
is not superior, or inferior, or equal, to any doc- 
trine of Socrates or Thales ; being of a totally 
different nature ; differing from these, as a per- 
fect Ideal Poem does from a coiTect Computation 
in Arithmetic. He who compares it with such 
standards may lament that, beyond the mere let- 
ter, the purport of this divine Humility has 
never been disclosed to him ; that the loftiest 
feeling hitherto vouchsafed to mankind is yet 
hidden from his eyes. * . . . . AVe under- 
stand ourselves to be risking no new assertion, 
but simply repeating what is abead}- the convic- 
tion of the gi-eatest of our age, when we say, — 
that cheerfully recognising, gratefully appropri- 
ating whatever Voltaire has proved, or any other 
man has proved, or shall prove, the Christian 
Eeligion, once here, cannot again pass away; 
that in one or the other form, it will endure 
through all time ; that as in Scripture, so also 
in the heart of man, is wiitten, ' the Gates of Hell 



* Voltaire, p. 173. 



CARLYLE'S relation to CHRISTIANITY. 51 

shall not prevail against it.' Were the meaning 
of this Faith never so obscured, as, indeed, in 
all times, the coarse passions and perceptions 
of the world do all but obHterate it in the hearts 
of most ; yet in every pure soul, in every Poet 
and Wise Man, it finds a new Missionary, a new 
Martyr, tiU the great volume of Universal History 
is finally closed, and man's destinies are fulfilled 
in this earth. ' It is a height to which the human 
species were fated and enabled to attain ; and 
from which, having once retained it, they can 
never retrograde." * 

These views of the historical significance of 
Christianity are almost identical with Goethe's; 
but as to the nature of Christianity itself, the two 
men take widely divergent paths. 

" Christianity as * the religion of expiation ' 
has two poles, between which all Christian life 
oscillates : the one, negative, is the consciousness 
of sin, or of a contrast between God and man ; 
the other, the positive pole, is the conscious- 
ness of gi'ace, or of the annulling of that con- 
trast, of the reconcilement of the disunited, 
and the reunion of God and man. According 
to the diversity in natures, the attractive power 
of Christianity rests now upon the side of 



Essay on Voltaire, pp. 172-174. 



52 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

the negative and now upon that of the positive 
pole." * 

If we apply this idea to Carlyle, we come to 
the conclusion that with him, exactly as with 
Kant, Calvin, Knox, Cromwell, and all other men 
who have grown up under the influence of de- 
fined notions of the Scotch Presbyterian Church, 
sympathy is found to be more on the side of the 
negative pole — decidedly in contrast to Goethe. 

The extent of the preponderating notions as 
to sinfulness and the imperfectness of human 
nature induced Carlyle to take this position — 
perhaps already well grounded in his nature, 
at all events, further developed by education. 

Here views inherited from his ancestors sud- 
denly stand out in rugged contrast to the Reli- 
gious Idealism of his soul, and here lies darkly 
and mvstcriously the essence of the contradic- 
tion of his religious %'iews so enigmatically split 
asunder. 

Carlyle, whom we even now hear saying : Man 
is a divine mystery, every man has an immortal 
soul which is the miiTor and living reflection 
of God ; Carlyle, whose gentle soul fully coincides 
with the behef that an infinite and powerful Good 



* These words, taken from a paper of Otto Pfleiderer's on 
"Goethe's Conception of ReHRion," are to be found in the 
"Protestantische Kirchenzeitung," April 11, 1883. 



CARLYLE's relation to CHRISTIANITY. 53 

exists, a God, to wliom every man's well being 
and perfection lies near, who, as the " Omnipo- 
tent" and the "All-Good" is able to find ways 
and means to advance the perfection of every 
man, to purify every man ; Carlyle, when he steps 
forth as " admonisher," and tries to show the 
absolute necessity of the morality of the world 
with fire and sword— as he has himself con- 
fessed — has gone hand in hand with Calvinism 
in the question of Predestination. 

And though this conviction as to the possi- 
bility of the complete damnation of mankind — 
in the Dantean sense— did not cause him to be- 
come a pessimist (what the logical result of it 
would have been), as a result of it, his religious 
views were always tinged with a sort of melan- 
choly, dejection and sadness which shows a pro- 
digious digression from Goethe's religious views. 
" Religion contains an infinite amount of sad- 
ness,"— this sentence of Novulis' comes du-ectly 
from his heart. The religion of sadness, the re- 
ligion of suffering, is his constantly recurring 
definition of Christianity. Goethe's expression, 
" the sanctuary of pain " he admitted completely 
into his realm of ideas and quoted it repeatedly. 

To be sure, we often find in his Journal such 
expressions as the following: "I say to myself, 
why shouldst thou not be thankful? God is 



54 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

good, all this life is a heavenly miracle, great, 
though stern and sad." " The universe is full 
of love, but also of inexorable sternness and 
severity, and it remains for ever true that God 
reigns." 

But the grim sternness and the inexorable harsh- 
ness which the ever insufficient nature of man 
brings "svith it, appears always like a ghost be- 
tween him and God, and robs him — at least at 
times — of the content of his OAvai soul. 

"I, like all mortals, have to feel the inexorable 
that there is iu life, and to say, as piously as 
I can : God's wiU, God's will! " \ . . " Sunt 
lacrimce rerum ! Fracixis hello, fessus annis'' he 
writes. " The deepest De Profandis was trifling 
in comparison with the feelings in my heart. 
There is nothing but wail and lamentation in the 
heart of all my thoughts." " I am very wae and 
lonely here," he writes to his wife, " take care, 
take care of thy poor little self, for truly enough, 
I have no other ! " "A solemn kind of sadness, 
a gloom of mind which, though heavy to bear, 
is not uuallied with sacrodnc^ss and blessedness." 
" There is nothing of joyful iu my life, nor ever 
likely to be ; no truly loved or loving soul — or 
practically as good as none — left to me in the 
earth any more. The one object that is wholly 
beautiful and noble, and in any sort helpful to 



CAELYLE's KELATION to CHRISTIANITY. 55 

my poor lieart, is she whom I do not name. The 
thought of her is drowned in sorrow to me, but 
also in tenderness, in love inexpressible." "'' 

A deep insiglit into his Hfe is given in a letter 
■\mtten on June 12, 1847, to the excellent Thomas 
Erskine, of Linlathen : " One is warned by Nature 
herself not to ' sit down by the side of sad thoughts,' 
as my friend OUver has it, and dwell voluntarily 
with what is son-owful and painful. Yet at the 
same time one has to say for one's self — at least 
I have — that all the good I ever got, came to 
me rather in the shape of sorrow : that there is 
nothing noble or godhke in the world but has 
in it something of ' infinite sadness,' very differ- 
ent indeed from what the current moral philoso- 
phies represent to us." t 

This shows the seriousness, the sadness and 
melancholy with which his whole thought is 
penetrated. It is the rebound of his soul, and 
of the infinite suffering with which his life is 
filled. The single hidden reason for all this ap- 
pears to lie in ihe much too tender nature of 
his heart, which is always being wounded, even 
in his love for his wife — and furthermore in 
the peculiar excitability of his nature. His wife 



* Jonrnal, Sep. 30, 1867. 

t Froude's Lile of Carlyle, Franklin Square Ed., vol. ii., p. 6. 



56 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

was once taken when she was very ill to the 
baths at St. Leonards, while he himself was re- 
turning to his work in London, and when the 
sufferer was somewhat better, he writes, on Sep- 
tember 29th, 1864, in answer to a letter from her : 

" Oh, my suffering little Jeannie ! Not a wink 
of real sleep again for you. I read (your letter) 
with that kind of heart you may suppose in the 
bright beautiful morning. And yet, dearest, there 
is something in your note that is welcomer to 
me than anything I have yet had — a sound of 
piety, of devout humiliation and gentle hope, and 
submission to the Highest, which affects me much 
and has been a great comfort for me. Yes, poor 
darling ! This was wanted. Proud stoicism you 
never failed in, nor do I want you to abate of 
it. But there is something l)eyond of which I be- 
lieve you have had too little. It softens the angry 
heart and is far from weakening it — nay, is the 
final strength of it, the fountain and nourish- 
ment of all real strength. Come home to your 

own poor nest again AVe have had 

a gi'cat deal of hard travelling together, we will 
not break down yet, please God." 

This letter fits completely into this connection. 
It shows what his real trouble was ; what op- 
pressed him ; what made him unhappy ; what 
filled his whole life with gloom and sadness, and 



CARLYLE's relation to CHRISTIANITY. 57 

what a sombre veil beclouded his religion. All 
of which, however beautiful the pictiu-e that pro- 
duces this " ascetic pessimistic " aspect of Chris- 
tianit}^, actually interfered with his keeping a 
strong grasp on that joyous, sunny height of 
Goethe's standpoint, whose " preeminently happy 
spirit," conscious of moral gi-eatness, willingly ad- 
mits "man's hereditary shortcomings," but without 
laying special stress upon this, and being com- 
pletely lifted above soitow and sin, soars to that 
" sublime view of the world," where satisfaction, 
in the bitterest suffering itself, consists in "recog- 
nising God," no matter how and where He may 
reveal himself. That is the actual blessedness on 
Earth. 

" Were not the ej'e so luminous, 
How could it ever see the sun ? 
Lived not in us God's influence, 
How could the divine dehght us ? " * 

This is Goethe's unflinching belief in the divine 
nature of man, a belief which could never in any 
way be affected by the gloomy influence of the 
doctrine of jDredestination. It was this belief 
in the " natural holiness of human nature " that 
separated Goethe, once for all, from the followers 
of the Augustinian doctrines, Luther himself in- 



* Goethe, Spruche in Prosa, p. 120. Ed. Leoper. 



58 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

eluded, and led him to the party of Pelagius. It 
was as he himself called it, " Christianity for his 
own private use." * 

If with Goethe this free and joyous contempla- 
tion of Ufe, in strong contrast to the gloomy and 
untrue teachings of the extreme insufficiency of 
human nature, was always able to win the vic- 
tory, it was — however obstructed by gloomy views — 
fundamentally the same as that of Carlyle. 

The optimistic and rehgious Idealism took pos- 
session of his soul, just as it does in the case 
of every healthy man's, and it was constantly 
brought home to him that " the gate of Hell shall 
have no strength." 

He cries out : " The Earth is not — in the name 
of God — a place of bitter hopelessness for any 
living creature, but it is emphatically the place of 
hope for all." t 

" One asks, Is man alone born to sorrow that 
has neither healing nor blessedness in it? All 
nature, from all corners, answers. No — for all 
the wise. No. Only Yea for the unwise, who 
have man's susceptibilities, appetites, capabilities, 
and not the insights and rugged vii-tues of men." % 

" Yes, the Redeemer Uveth. He is no Jew, or 



* Wahrheit unci Diclaturg, (Hempel) vol. iii, p. 178. 
t Froude's Life of Carlyle, vol. iii., p. 15. 
tOp. cit., p. 42. 



CAKLYLE'S relation to CHRISTIANITY. 59 

image of a man, or surplice, or old creed, but 
the Unnamable Maker of us, voiceless, formless 
within our own soul, whose voice is every noble 
and genuine impulse of our souls. He is yet 
there, in us and around us, and ice are there. 
No Eremite or fanatic whatever had more than 
we have ; how much less had most of them ? " 

Carlyle's Calvinistic views stand not altogether 
in inexplicable contradiction to this sentiment. 
AVhat induced him to doubt of the insufficiency 
of human nature — divine as it is and should be — 
what led him to a complete and exaggerated 
contempt for the world, was his unrelenting hate 
of the evil, and the immoral as it exists, as a 
rather large factor in the world's history. This 
is a point which properly belongs to the Chapter 
on Ethics, but must, nevertheless, be discussed 
here, where he defines his position as to Predes- 
tination and Christianity in general. 

The moral duty imposed upon us by God, 
whose fulfillment — as Carlyle has ah-eady said — 
is our divine rigid, mil only be recognized by 
a few, and performed by still fewer. Only the 
soul of a hero can perform it — a man of extra- 
ordinary greatness and mellowness — a man chosen 
by God ; average humanity deprives itself of this 
heroism ; does not listen to the voice of its heart, 
which is the command of God ; and so misses 



60 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

its divine call. And as the noble man can only 
hate and despise what is worthless, so does also 
the righteous God. That the just God judges 
according to a higher law than that of human 
morality, that with him it is the law of love 
which judges, finds in Carlyle no fixed abode. 
AVhere the question is one of the practical fur- 
therance of moraUty, Carlyle comes out strongly 
as " admouisher." Here — and here only — is 
Carlyle's God found. The Old Testament God, 
the punishing and revengeful God is his, and his 
religion might be said to be that of " Job, Isaiah 
and Ezekiel." His bosom is filled with hatred 
and revenge toward the unwoiihy. The Christian 
doctrine of forgiveness and of human love re- 
cedes, and Hell opens her gates f(n- the wicked 
who have devoted themselves voluntarily to des- 
truction, and with whom God and Eternity can 
have nothing in common. 

At this jioint Carlyle returns to the doctrines 
of the Church, but fails to reach the heights which 
the Christianity of Goethe and Schiller embraced. 
Carlyle forgets the words : 

" All sins shall be forgiven, 
And Hell shall no more be." 

One can see from these views of the justice 
of the punishing God, how Carlyle clung to the 
ascetic-pessimistic aspect of Christianity ; how 



CARLYLE's EELATION to CHRISTIANITY. 61 

it was that the idea of mercy and of love — which, 
placed above everything else, even justice itself, 
and finally carrying victory with it — was always 
receding with him, and especially when it comes 
to the point of inciting to morality the degener- 
ated elements of the world. 

That these gloomy views do not play an im- 
portant role with Carlyle ; that the " religion of 
expiation," in its chief significance as a mercy 
bringer, finds an explanation in him, remains in 
spite of ever}i;hing, a determined fact, though Car- 
lyle as a " prophet " and preacher (and that he 
considered was his mission in life) did not recog- 
nize the "unrestricted" free and "joyful Godli- 
ness " acknowledged by Goethe as the final goal. 
Carlyle had not studied in the school of antiquity 
as had Goethe. For his ovm. inner experience 
there was no morality which had not been won 
by severe battles; no morality which, as a free 
gift of Nature, is given to man in his cradle. 
Carlyle's birth, his education, his whole nature 
had denied him •' the hopeful and happy spirit " — 
which, however, would not have been necessary 
to assist him to conquer the passionate battles 
against immorality. That, however, the " Sinai's 
thunder " of the punishing God did not indicate 
his latest views on this subject cannot be too 
.earnestly emphasized. 



62 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

" Can tliiinder from all the thirty -two azimuths, 
repeated daily for centuries of years, make God's 
Laws more godlike to me ? Brother, No. Per- 
haps I am grown to be a man now ; and do not 
need the thunder and the terror any longer ! Per- 
haps I am above being frightened ; perha]>s it is 
not Fear, but Reverence alone, that shall now 
lead me ! Revelations, Inspirations ? Yes ; and 
thy own god-created Soul ; dost thou not call 
that a ' revelation ? ' AVho made Thee ? AVhere 
didst Thou come from? The voice of Etcrnit}', 
if thou be not a blasphemer and poor asphyxiated 
mute, speaks with that tongue of thine ! Thou 
art the latest Birth of Nature ; it is ' the Inspira- 
tion of the Almighty ' tliat giveth th^e understand- 
ing ! My brother, my brother ! " * 



* Past ftnd Present, p. 108. 



CHAPTER IV. 

CARLYLE AND THE VARIOUS PHASES 

OF CHRISTIANITY : THE CHURCH 

AND THEOLOGICAL SCIENCE. 

Motto: " IntoJerance, animosity can forward no cause, and 
least of all becomes the cause of moral and religious truth. A 
wise man has well reminded us ' that in any controversy the 
moment we feel angrj- we have already ceased btrivinji; for Truth, 
and begun striving for ourselves.'" — Carlyle's E.ssay on Vol- 
taire, p. 181. 

Ou October llth, 1841, Carlyle writfd to the 
excellent and great Scotch divine, Chalmers : 
" that you, with your generous, hopeful heart, 
believe that there may still exist in our actual 
churches enough of divine fire to awaken the 
supine rich and the degraded poor, and act vic- 
toriously against such a mass of pressing and 
ever-accumulating evils — alas ! what worse could 
be said of this by the bitterest ojiponent of it, 
than that it is a noble hoping against hope, a 
noble strenuous determination to gather from the 



64 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

dry deciduous tree wliat the green alone could 
yield." * 

Carlyle was not a bitter enemy to " tlie church" 
as he has frequently been represented in Enjj^land. 
He was of the deepest conviction that all man- 
kind belong to one universal divine fellowship, 
which, independent of churches, ceremonies and 
liturgies, rests only and solely in the heart of 
man. He was an enemy to falsehood and to 
hypocritical intolerance ; and where, indeed, is 
this more to be found in the world's history than 
in priestcraft ? 

His relation to the Church again is not essen- 
tially different from Goethe's. 

In his youth he attended the Scotch Presby- 
terian Church, but later in life his experience 
was similar to Goethe's. The mere externali- 
ties of the Church, its accepted dogmas re- 
pelled him. Carlyle was all his life of a pious 
frame of mind, and was able to enter into the 
feelings of the pious reverence of tlie savage 
before his fetish, and of the heathen before his 
idol. The sight of a fervently praying woman 
in the cathedral at Briigge tilled him with melan- 
choly — " a more beautiful ])icture than all the 
pictures of Eubens and Rembrandt." He could 



* Life of Chalmers (Hannn) p. 109. 



VARIOUS PHASES OF CHRISTIANITY. 65 

tliorougLly imdcrstand that inner need — what it 
is that impels a devout Catholic to long for the 
mediation of a saint ; but all forms and empty 
creeds, or creeds whose meaning he — after sin- 
cere trial — could not comprehend, filled him with 
the same feehng as the dull belief of a sceptic 
did — with hoiTor and compassion. Like Goethe, he 
remained true to the Bible during his whole life : 
in Craigenputtock he read aloud from it for morn- 
ing prayers. " In the poorest cottage," he says 
in 1832, " is one Book, wherein for several thou- 
sands of years, the spirit of man has found light, 
and nourishment, and an interpreting response 
to whatever is Deepest in him ; wherein still, to 
this day, for the eye that will look well, the 
mystery of Existence reflects itself, if nc^t re- 
solved, yet revealed, and prophetically emblemed," 
and again in 1867 he calls the Bible " the truest 
of all books," * as earlier, in 1850, he had alluded 
to it as " the most earnest of books," t and it 
was to the end of his life — as well as Goethe and 
Shakespeare — his faithful companion. X That he 
recognized, as Goethe did, that there were other 
revelations, we see from the following : " One 



* Shooting Niagara, p. 221. 

t Latter-Daj' Pamphlets, p. 274. 

X Froude'a Life of Carlyle, vol. iv., chap. 24. 



66 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

Bible I know, of whose Plenary Inspiration clonbt 
is not so mucli as possible ; nay, witli my own 
eyes I saw the Gocl's-Hand writing it ; thereof 
all other Bibles are but Leaves, — say, in Picture- 
AVriting to assist the weaker faculty." * 

Goethe writes to Lavater, August 0th, 1782, 
" You consider the Gospel as it stands divine 
Truth. A distinct voice fi-om Heaven would not 
con^'ince me that water burns and fire quenches, 
that birth may be miraculous, and that a dead 
person is raised to life ; far more do I consider 
all this blasphemy against the gi-eat God and his 
revelations in Nature. You find nothing more 
beautiful than the Gospi-ls ; I find a thousand 
written pages by ancients and moderns just as 
beautiful and useful and iudispensible to human- 

These words describe Carlyle's position per- 
fectly. " x\.rt thou a giown baby, then, to fancy 
that the miracle lies in miles of distance, or in 
pounds of avoirdupois; and not to see tliat 
the true inexplicable God-revealing miracle lies 
in this, that I can stretch fortli my hand at 
all ; that I have free Force 1 1 chitch auglit 
therewith ? " t Man'is a gi-eat miracle, sufficient- 



* Sartor Kesartus, p. IM. 
fOp. cit, p. 182. 



VARIOUS PHASES OF CHRISTIANITY. 67 

ly inexplicable, so that others are entirely super- 
fluous. Things were regarded by many men as 
miracles which were simply incredible, and which 
could not be supported or made credible by logic 
or '* metaphysical hocus-pocus " or " theosophical 
moonshine." 

When such ceremonies as baptism throw Goethe 
so out of tune that he cannot be present at them ; 
when in Meiuingen he is displeased because his 
residence is opposite a church, and he writes on 
May 12th, 1782, to Frau von Stein: "Here I 
live opposite a church, which is a terrible situa- 
tion for one who neither prays upon this or that 
mountain, and has no prescribed hours to wor- 
ship God ; " and when Schiller frankly declares 
that " no sermon precisely pleases him," it is 
exactly what we often meet with in Carlyle's Jour- 
nal and works. 

Nevertheless, in the beginning of his London 
life, he made an attempt to identify himself with 
some church, but in vain. " I tried various chap- 
els ; I found in each some vulgar, illiterate man 
declaiming about matters of which he knew noth- 
ing. I tried the Church of England. I found 
there a decent educated gentleman reading out 
of a book words very beautiful, which had ex- 
pressed once the serious thoughts of pious, ad- 
mirable souls. I decidedly preferred the Church 



68 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

of England man ; but I luul to say to liim : * I 
perceive, sir, that at the bottom you know as little 
about the matter as the other fellow.' " - 

" It is every way strange to consider," be once 
■s\Tote, " what Christianity, so-called, has grown 
to within these two centuries — on the Howard 
and Fry side as on every other — a paltry, mealy- 
mouthed ' religion of cowards,' which also, as I 
believe, awaits its * abolition ' from the avenging 
power. If men will turn away their faces from 
God and set up idols, temporary phantasms, in- 
stead of the Eternal One — alas ! the consequences 
are from of old well known." t 

Carlyle's position as to the Church on the one 
hand, and dogmatic theological science on the 
other, finds an explanation in his comprehension 
of the idea of God. 

When Sterling took exception to Professor 
Teufelsdrockh's God because it a])peared to be 
" no personal God," Carlyle replied : " A grave 
charge, nevertheless — an awful charge — to which, 
if I mistake not, the Professor, laying his hand 
on his heart, will reply with some gesture ex- 
pressing the solemnest denittl. In gesture rather 
than in speech, for the Iliyheat cannot be spoken 



* Froude's Life of Carlyle, vol. iii., p. 10. 
t Op. cit., vol. iv., p. 6. 



VARIOUS PHASES OF CHRISTIANITY. 69 

in words. Personal ! Impersonal ! Me ! Thou ! 
What meaning can any mortal (after all) attach 
to tliem in reference to such an object ? Wer 
darf Ihii nennen f I dare not and do not. That 
you dare and do (to some gi-eater extent) is a 
matter I am far from taking offence at. Nay, 
with all sincerity, I can rejoice that you have 
a creed of that kind which gives you happy 
thoughts, nerves you for good actions, brings 
you into readier communion with many good 
men. My true wish is, that such a creed may 
long hold compactly together in you, and be * a 
covert from the heat, a shelter from the storm, 
as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.' 
Well is it, if we have a printed litany to pray 
fi'om ; and yet not ill if we can pray in silence ; 
for silence, too, is audible there. Finally, assume 
yourself that I am neither Pagan nor Turk, nor 
circumcised Jew, but an unfortunate Christian 
individual resident at Chelsea in this year of 
gi'ace, neither Pantheist, nor Pot-theist, nor any 
Theist or 1st whatsoever, having the most de- 
cided contempt for all such manner of system- 
builders or sect-founders — as far as contempt 
may be compatible with so mild a nature — feel- 
ing well beforehand (taught by long experience) 
that all such are and ever must be wrong. By 
God's blessing, one has got two eyes to look 



70 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

with, alco a mind capable of knowing, of believ- 
ing. This is all the creed I Anil at this time in- 
sist on. And now may I beg one thing, that 
whenever in my thoughts or your own, you fall 
on any dogma that tends to estrange you from me, 
pray believe that to be false, false as Beelzebub, 
till you get clearer evidence." * 

The preceding words clearly show the bent of 
Carlyle's mind towards religious matters. As he 
himself was continually saying with severeness, 
" creeils the recital of certain ceremonies," 
" the thirty-nine articles," rituals and liturgies, 
hierarchies, and catechisms have nothing whatever 
to dc with the nature of lielief itself, with religion 
itself, for " religion is no mere external append- 
age ; " those things are only the outer husk, those 
same church clothes " have gone son'owfully out- 
at-elbows ; " first must the dead letter of religion 
own itself d(>ad, if the living spirit of religion is 
to arise on us, " newborn of Heaven." t 

Religion is the heavenly light which slumbers 
in the soul of man. % It is the great, heavenly 
di^'ine truth which has been left to us as a joy, a 
comfort, and a protection in the midst of the 



* Froude's Life of Carlyle, vol. iii., p. 10. 
f Sartor Resartns, hk. ii., chap. 3. 
X Latter-Day Pamphlets, p. 195. 



VARIOUS PHASES OF CHRISTIANITY. 71 

changeful cycles of the world ; it is an eternal 
truth whicli we can never question, " it does not 
consist in the many things which man is in doubt 
of and tries to beUeve, but of the few he is assured 
of, and has no need of effort for believing." 

Therefore it is vain, impossible, and for the 
weak mind it is even dangerous and injurious to 
attempt to prove the necessity, the possibility of 
religion according to a metaphysical method ; it 
is impossible, because rehgion is not a thing of 
logical or mathematical understanding, but of the 
human, feeling heart, of living belief. " An amal- 
gam of Christian verities " and modern critical 
philosophy was and could bo nothing else but 
" poisonous insincerity." "" But this subject is 
well treated in Carlyle's Life of Sterling. 

There is found a delicately executed picture of •" 
the earnest and true endeavour of John Sterling 
to bring theology into harmony and relation with 
the critical philosophy of Kant — according to 
Coleridge's example — and of the disastrous effect 
of this endeavour upon a true and frank nature. 

" No man of Sterling's veracity, had he clearly 
consulted his own heart, or had his own heart 
been capable of clearly responding, and not been 
dazzled and bewildered by transient phantasies 



* Froude's Life of Carlj'le, vol. iii., chap. 2. 



72 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

and tlieosopliic nloonshme— could have imder- 
takeu this function. His heaii would have an- 
swered : 'No, thou canst not.' 'What is in- 
crediV)le to thee, thou shalt not, at thy soul's 
peril, attempt to believe!' Else whither for a 
refuge, or die here. Go to Perdition if thou 
must,— but not with a lie in thy mouth ; by 
the Eternal Maker, no ! " * 

" Concerning this attempt of Sterling's to tind 
sanctuary in the old Church, and desperately 
gi-asp the hem of her garment in such manner, 
there will at present be many opinions : and mine 
must be recorded here in tlat reproval of it, in 
mere pitying condemnation of it, as a rash, false, 

unwise and unpermitted step Alas, 

if we did remember the divine and awful nature 
of God's Trutli, and had not so forgotten it as 
poor doomed creatures never did before, — should 
we, durst we, in our most audacious moments, 
think of wedding it to the world's Untruth, which 
is also, hke all untruths, the Devil's? Only in 
in the world's last lethargy can such things be 
done, and accounted safe and pious ! Fools ! 
' Do you think the living God is a buzzard idol,' 
sternly asks Milton, ' that you dare adthess Him 
in this manner ? ' Such darkness, thick sluggish 



* Carlyle's Life of Sterling, chap. 2, 



VARIOUS PHASES OF CHRISTIANITY. 73 

clouds of cowardice and oblivious baseness, have 
accumulated on us : thickening as if towards the 
eternal sleep! It is not now known, Avhat never 
needed proof or statement before, that Religion 
is not a doubt ; that it is a certainty, — or else a 
mockery and hoiTor. That none or all of the 
many things we are in doubt about, and need to 
have demonstrated and rendered probable, can, 
by any alchymy be made a * Religion ' for us • 
but are and must continue a baleful, quiet or 
unquiet Hypocrisy for us; and bring — salvation, 
do we fancy ? I think, it is another thing they 
will bring, and are on all hands, visibly bringing, 
this good while ! " " 

In the same text is found Carlyle's terrible cas- 
tigatory sermon against the Jesuits : 

" Man's reUgion, whatever it may be, is a dis- 
cerned fact, and coherent system of discerned 
facts ; he stands fronting the worlds and eterni- 
ties upon it . to douht of it is not permissible at 
all ! He must verify or expel his doubts, convert 
them into certainty of Yes or No ; or they will 
be the death of his religion. But, on the other 
hand, convert tliem into certainty of Yes an^No; 
or even of Yes though No, as the Ignatian method 
is, what mil become of your religion ? . . . . 



* Carlyle's Life of Sterling, Part I., chai. 15. 



74 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

Tlie religion of a man in these strange circum- 
stances, what living conviction he has about his 
Destiny in this Universe, falls into a most strange 
condition ; — and, in truth, I have observed, is 
apt to take refuge in the stomach mainly. The 
man goes through his prescribed fugle-motions 
at church and elsewhere, keeping his conscience 
and sense of decency at ease thereby ; and in 
some empty part of his brain, if he have fancy 
left, or brain other than a beaver's, there goes 
on occasionally some dance of dreamy hypotheses, 
sentimental echoes, shadows, and other inane 
make-believes, — which I think are quite the con- 
trary of a possession to him ; leading to no clear 
Faith, or divine life-and-death Certainty of any 
kind ; but to a torpid species of delirium soin- 
nians and delirium stertens rather. In his head 
or in his heart this man has of available religion 
none. 

The Pig Philosophy is the result of such 
manceuATing. 

If Carlyle ever touches upon this subject, he 
takes especial pains to censure Coleridge's course, 
in which more or less successful and excellent 
men, such as Maurice, Kingsley, Hare and Ster- 
ling, have sought their happiness ; but the true 



* Latter-Day Pamphlets, p. 267. 



VAEIOUS PHASES OF CHRISTIANITY. 75 

kernel, Coleridge's honest effort, he by no means 
misconceived. 

" Let me not be unjust to this memorable man," 
he says. " Surely there was here, in his pious, 
ever-labouring, subtle mind, a precious truth, or 
prefigurement of truth ; and yet a fatal delusion 
withal. Prefigurement that, in spite of beaver 
sciences and temporary spiritual hebetude and 
cecity, man and his Universe were eternally di- 
vine ; and that no past nobleness, or revelation 
of the divine, could or would ever be lost to him. 
Most true, surely, and worthy of all acceptance. 
Good also to do what you can with old Churches 
and practical Symbols of the Noble : nay, quit 
not the burnt ruins of them while you find there 
is still gold to be dug there. But, on the whole, 
do not think you can, by logical alchymy, distil 
astral spii-its from them ; or, if you could, that 
said astral spirits, or defunct logical phantasms, 
could serve you in anything. What the light of 
your mind, which is the direct inspiration of the 
Almighty, pronounces incredible, — that, in God's 
name, leave uncredited ; at your peril do not try 
behaving that. No subtlest hocus-pocus of ' rea- 
son ' versus ' understanding ' will avail for that 
feat, — and it is terribly perilous to try it in these 
provinces ! " * 



* Carlyle's Life of Sterling, p. 53. 



76 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

The same tlioiiglit is expressed in a letter writ- 
ten to Sterling on June 7tli, 1837 : 

" You announce that j^ou are rather quitting 
philosophy and theology — I predict that you will 
quit them more and more. I give it you as my 
decided prognosis that the two provinces in ques- 
tion are become theorem, brain-web and shadow, 
wherein no earnest soul can find solidity for it- 
self. Shadow, I say ; yet the shadow projected 
from an everlasting reality that is within our- 
selves. Quit the shadow. Seek the reality." 



CHAPTER V. 

GOD. 

It may now be stated in a very few words wliat 
Carlyle regarded as the " truth." 

No " new religion " need be looked for. " Sim- 
ple souls still clamour occasionally for what they 
call a 'new religion.' My friends, you will not 
get this new religion of yours; — I perceive you 
ah-eady have it, always had it ! All that is true 
is your 'religion,' — is it not? Commanded by 
the Eternal God to be j?d;/or?Met?, I should think, 

if it is true ! 

"Your way of looking at life has been at aU 
times a mirror picture of mankind, and ' if you 
have now no Heaven to look to; if you now 
sprawl, lamed and lost, sunk to the chin in the 
pathless sloughs of this lower world without guid- 
ance fi'om above, know that the fault is not 
Heaven's at all, but your own ! . . . . Arise, 
make this thing more divine, and that thing,^ 
and thyself, of all things; and work, and sleep 



78 THOMAS CARLYLE, 

not; for the niglit cometli, wherem no man can 
work ! " * 

" This new religion is no pill to be swallowed 
down — it is l^ut a reawakening of thy own Self 
from within." t It must exert itself to obtain a 
true and warm belief in God and to reach moral 
activity. This new reUgion consists in the re- 
conquered and resuoitated religious feeling of a 
change of heart. Therein lies the real salvation 
of the world. 

" The Maker's Laws, whether they are promul- 
gated in Sinai Thunder, to the ear or imagina- 
tion, or quite otherwise promulgated, are the 
Laws of God ; transcendant, everlasting, impera- 
tively demanding obedience from all men. The 
Universe is made by Law ; the great Soul of the 
World is just and not unjust. Look then, if thou 
have eyes or soid k'ft, into this shoreless Incom- 
prehensible : into the heart of its tumultuous 
Appearances, Embroilments, and mad Time-Vor- 
texes, is there not, silent, eternal, an All-just, an 
All-beautiful ; sole Ecality and ultimate control- 
ling power of the whole ? This is not a figure 
of speech ; this is a fact. The fact of Gravita- 
tion, known to all animals, is not surer than this 



* Latter-Day Pamphlets, p. 285. 
t Past and Present, p. 199. 



GOD. 79 

inner Fact, which may be known to all men. He 
who knows this, it will sink, silent, awful, un- 
speakable into his heart. He will say with 
Faust : ' Who dare name Him ? ' Most rituals or 
' namings ' he will fall in with at present, are 
like to bo ' namings ' — which shall be nameless ! 
In silence, in the Eternal Temple, let him wor- 
ship, if there be no tit word. Such knowledge, 
the crown of his whole spiritual being, the life 
of his hfe, let him keep and sacredly walk by. 
He has a rehgion. Hourly and daih^ for him- 
self and for the whole world, a faithful, un- 
spoken, but not ineflectual prayer rises, ' Thy 
will be done.' His whole work on Eaiih is an 
emblematic spoken or acted prayer. Be the will 
of God done on Earth, — not the Devil's will, 
or any of the Devil's servant's wills ! He has 
a religion, this man ; an everlasting Load-star 
that beams the brighter in the Heavens, the 
darker here on Earth grows the night around 
him." * 

To perform God's will, to live a pious life, that 
is Carlyle's simple doctrine — whether the heart 
feels happy in it or not, is not taken into con- 
sideration at all : man must keep God's com- 
mandments, must be moral. And only so far as 



* Carlyle's Past and Present, p. 107. 



80 THOMAS CALLYLE. 

Christianity teaches this, oulj so far as the Chris- 
tian is the most perfect ideal of a " moral Re- 
ligion," does Carlyle feel respect for it. He has 
nothing whatever to do %\'ith " forms, rituals, 
creeds and ceremonies," as he himself always 
Bays. To use Fichte's words : " his religious ideas 
are not concerned ■vs'ith imputing qualities to 
God which are acknowledged, or should be ac- 
knowledged, as having no reference to our moral 
destiny.'* 



CHAPTER VI. 

CABLYLE'S ATTITUDE TOWARD SCI- 
ENCE, AND ESPECIALLY TO- 
WARD PHILOSOPHY. 

C'est d' Allemagne que Carlyle a tir^ ees plus grand idc'es. 

n y a Otudie De 1780 fi 1830 TAllemagne a produit 

toutes les idees de notre age historique, et pendant un demi — 
siCcle encore, pendant un siCcle pent-etre, notre grandes affaire 
sera de les repcnser. — Taine, IdCjilisme Anglais p. 72 ; also in 
bis Lit. Hist., 5, 4, §2 1, p. C38. [English Translation.] 

An irreverent knowledge is no knowledge. — Carlyle's Essay 
on Chartism, p. 178. 

From Carlyle's deepest conviction that the — 
unconsciously living — religious feeling of vener- 
ation for the divine which is everywhere present, 
not only satisfies the highest moral needs, but 
actually constitutes the only highest development 
of mankind — is shown his attitude towards science 
in general, and philosophy in particular. 

If the *' philosophical-scientific tendency " of 
the times (as Fichte expresses it) is inclined 
" to grant nothing but what is comprehensible," 
and nothing but what the " carpenter's rule " can 
establish ; if merely sensuous empiricism relies 



82 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

on Science whose foundations are merely based 
upon logical conclusions and deductions; if it 
attempts to ignore or suppress the incomprehen- 
sible, the mysterious, the transcendental and the 
metaphysical which represents the element of 
rehgiou ; * or if it shows it to be absurd fanati- 
cism or mysticism, with such a state of things 
which Carlyle finds too widely spread throughout 
the whole of English and French philosophy up 
to his own time, he has absolutely no sympathy. 

But he joyfully recognized the results and 
ideals of the " real " philosophy which he be- 
lieyed was found in the efibrts of the German 
thinkers — whose early dawn for England he saw 
coming from Dugald Steward. 

According to Carlyle's couyiction, an accurate 
knowledge of the nature of philosophy and its 
problems was first made possible in Germany by 
the critical philosophy of Kant ; its problems 
which (according to Carlyle's comprehension), in 
order that the inner eye of truth might be opened, 
rested upon an indubitable principle, and the 
acceptance of "the absolutely and prmiitiyely 
True ; " f rested upon the " i)rimitively True " 
which, as the beginning of all philosophy, is 

* Fichte, 7, 241. 

t Essay, State of General Literature. 



carlyle's attitude toward science. 83 

written in the soul of man ; rested upon that 
truth which can never be uttered by philosophy 
alone, whose existence philosophy herself will 
never be able to prove, even with the help of logic 
and science. 

Carlyle awards to philosophy only a limited 
province : he regards it only as a high and noble 
means to a higher and nobler end ; to that higher 
end which increases the view that " the belief in 
Religion " for all men, as well as for thinkers 
and philosophers, is the greatest gift that can 
be bestowed — a gift which (according to his no- 
tion) is even again only a means to an end — that 
of some living achievement. 

To have raised this idea to a scientific fact was 
the service which the Germans — in his eyes — 
had rendered to mankind, and his attitude toward 
philosophy is found everywhere in his judgments 
of the several directions which the history of 
philosophy has taken. 

'In most of the European nations there is no 
such thing as a Science of Mind ; only more or 
less advancement in the general sciences or the 

special sciences of matter So it is 

in France and in England, only the Germans 
have made any decisive effoi-t in * psychological 
science ; ' the science of the age, in short, is 
physical, chemical, physiological ; in all shapes 



84 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

meclianical. Our fayourite matliematics, tlie high- 
ly prized exponent of all these sciences, has also 
become more and more mechanical. Excellence 
in the higher branches of mathematics depends 
less on the natural genius than on acquired ex- 
jiertness in -wielding its machinery. AVithout nn- 
deryaluiug the ^vonderfnl results Avhich a Lo- 
gi'auge or a Laplace educes by means of it, we 
may remark, that their calculus, dill'erential and 
integral, is little else than a more cunningly con- 
structed arithmetical mill ; when the faetor« being 
put in, are, as it were, ground into the true 
product, under coyer, and without ()th(U- eft'ort on 
our part than a steady turning of the handles. 
We haye more Mathematics than eyer ; but less 
Mathesis, Archimedes and Plato could not have 
read the Mechaniqiie Celede ; liut neither would 
the whole French Institute see aught in the say- 
ing, ' God geometrises ! ' but a sentimental rodo- 
montrade." * 

Since Locke's time our whole metaphysics has 
not been spiritual, but physical and material. 
The unusual respect with which his Essay has 
always been held (a respect founded upon the 
excellent character of the man), is an extraordi- 
nary sign of the times. Its whole teaching, in 



* Signs of the Times, pp. 23G 2:^7. 



carlyle's attitude toward science. 85 

its methods and its results, is meelianical accord- 
ing to its aim and origin. It is no philosophy of 
the mind, only an examination of the origin of 
consciousness, of our ideas — or, as we might say, 
a history of their origin ; what we may be able 
to see with the mind and in the mind ; of the 
great mystery of our moral obligation and of 
our moral freedom ; that restricted or unrestricted 
dependence of matter on mind ; our mysterious 
conceptions of Time and Space ; of God and the 
Universe never once are touched upon in all 
these examinations, and do not appear to have 
the least connection with the purport of the 



The earliest form of Scotch metaphysics had 
an indistinct conception that this was false, but 
they did not, however, attempt to correct it. 
Reid's school had from the start taken a mechan- 
ical trend, as no other seemed to appear to them ; 
the wonderful conclusions which Hume reached — 
starting from facts which had been accepted by 
Eeid's School were founded by this same Scotch 
School. They let " instinct " loose, like a mas- 
tiff, in order to render their own position secure 
from the adversaries. They i)ull themselves 
merrily along — by the logical chains which Hume 
threw out to them and to the whole world — into 
the boundless abysses of Atheism and Fatalism. 



86 THOMAS CAliLYLE. 

But in some way the chain broke between them, 
and the end of the whole matter was that neither 
one grieved for the other — even as httle as for 
the contemporary philosophical movement in Eng- 
land which was kept together by such men as 
Hartley, Darwin and Priestley. Hartley's "vibra- 
tions" and " vibratiuncles" were, one could easily 
beheve, mechanical and material enough, but our 
neighbours on the Continent could go still farther. 

One of her philosophers has made the extra- 
ordinary discovery that as the livor produces bile 
so the brain secretes thoughts ; an astounding 
fact this, which Dr. Cabanis recently in hi* Unp- 
■ports dn Physique ct da Moral de Vhomine has 
followed to its extreme ends. Tlie metaphysics 
of this searcher is, nevertheless, not shadowless 
and unsubstantial ! AVith his operating knife 
and his " psychological soumling leads " he dis- 
sects the whole ethical structure of mankind, and 
then ofl'ers it to the tliinking judgment of the 
world under a microscope, blowing it loud through 
his anatomical tube. Thought — he admits — is 
still secreted in the brain ; but then, to be sure, 
one could consistently conclude — an interesting 
fact — that poetry and religion are both " product 
of the smaller intestines ! " 

"NVe cherish the greatest admiration for this 
learned man ; with what scientitic Stoicism does he 



carlyle's attitude toward science. 87 

not stride through the world of miracles without 
being amazed ; like a philosopher through an enor- 
mous Yauxhall, whose fireworks and Avater-falls 
and dashing music is the joy and delight of the 
crowd, but for him nothing more than " saltpetre, 
pasteboard and catgut." - 

We conclude here Carlyle's animadversions on 
the mechanical aspects of English and French 
philosophers, and turn our attention to his judg- 
ment of those philosophies — especially the Ger- 
man critical philosophy — which makes an end 
of " perversion of all i)hilosophies." 

" The Kantist, in direct contradiction to Locke 
and all his followers, both of the French and 
Euglish or Scotch Schools, commences from with- 
in, and proceeds outwards ; instead of commenc- 
ing from without, and, with various precautions 
and hesitations, endeavouring to proceed inwards. 
The ultimate aim of all Philosophy must be to 
interpret appearances, — from the given symbol 
to ascertain the thing. Now the first step to- 
wards this, the aim of what may be called Pri-. 
mary or Critical Philosophy, must be to find 
some indubitable principle ; to fix ourselves on 
some unchangeable basis ; to discover what the 
Germans call the UncaJir, the Primitive Truth, 



Essays, vol. ii., p, 238. 



88 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

tlie necessarily, absolutely aucl eterually True. 
This necessarily True, this al)solute basis of 
Truth, Locke silently, and Reid and his follo^yers 
"Nvith more tumult, tiud in a certain modified Ex- 
j)erience, and eyidence of Sense, in the uuiyersal 
and natural persuasion of all men. Not so the 
Germans : they deny that there is here any ab- 
solute Truth, or that any Philosophy Avhateyer 
can be built on such a basis ; nay, they go to 
the length of asserting, that such an appeal eyen 
to the uniyersal persuasions of mankind, gather 
them with "svhat precautions you may, amounts 
to a total abdication of Philosophy, strictly so 
called, and renders not only its farther progi-ess, 
but its very existence, impossible. What, they 
would say, haye the persuasions, or instinctiyo 
beliefs, or whatever they are called, of men, to 
do in this matti-r '? Is it not the object of 
Philosophy to enlighten, and rectify, and many 
times directly contradict these very beliefs. . , . 
The Germans take up this matter difi'erently, 
and would assail Hume, not in his outworks, 
l)ut in the centre of his citadel. They deny his 
first principle, that Sense is the only inlet of 
Knowledge, that Experience is the primary gi'ound 
of Belief. Their Primitive Truth, however, they 
seek, not historically and by experiment, in the 
imiveral persuasions of men, but by intuition, 



carlyle's attitude toward science. 89 

iu the deepest and purest nature of Man. In- 
stead of attempting, wliicli they consider vain, 
to prove the existence of God, Virtue, an im- 
material Soul, by inferences drawn, as the con- 
clusion of all Philosophy, torn the world of 
Sense, they find these things written as the be- 
ginning of all Philosophy, in obscured but iu- 
eflaceable charactei-s, within our inmost being ; 
and themselves first affording any certainty and 
clear meaning to that very world of Sense, by 
which we endeavour to demonstrate them. 

" God ?Vs', nay, alone vV, for with like em]>hasis 
we cannot say that anything else is. This is the 
Absolute, the Primitively True, which the philo- 
sopher seeks. Endeavoming, by logical argu- 
ment, to prove the existence of God, a Kantist 
might say, would be taking out a candle to look 
for the sun ; nay, gaze steadily into your candle- 
light, and the sun himself may be invisible. To 
open the inward eye to the sight of this Prim- 
itively True ; or rather we might call it, to clear 
off the Obscurations of Sense, which eclipse this 
truth within us, so that we may see it, and be- 
lieve it not only to be true, but the foundation 
and essence of all other truth, — mav, in such 
language as we are hero using, be said to be the 
problem of Critical Philosophy." * 

* Carlyle's Essay on The State of German Literatm-e, pp.,G7-69. 



90 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

" In this point of view, Kant's system may be 
thouglit to have a remote affinity to those of 
Malebranche and Descartes. But if they in some 
measure agree as to their aim, there is the widest 
difference as to the means. AVe state what to 
ourselves has long appeared the grand charac- 
teristic of Kant's Philosophy, when we mention 
his distinction, sekloni perhaps expressed so 
broadlv, but imiformly inipHed, between Under- 
standing and Reason ( Vt'i\st(tnd and Yernunft). 
To the Kantists, Understanding and Reason are 
organs, or rather, we should say, modes of oper- 
ation, by which the mind discovers Truth ; Imt 
they think tliat their manner of proceeding 
is essentially different ; that their provinces are 
separable and distinguishal)le ; nay, that it is of 
the last impoi-tance to separate and distinguish 
them. Reason, the Kantists say, is of a higher 
nature tlian Understanding; it works by more 
subtle methods, or higher oV)jects, and requires 
a far finer culture for its development ; indeed, 
in many men it is never developed at all : Init 
its results are no less certain, nay, rather they 
are much more so ; for Reason discerns Truth 
itself, the absolutely and primitively True ; while 
the Understanding discerns only relatione, and 
cannot decide ^^•ithout //. The proper province 
of Understanding is all, strictly speaking, real. 



carlyle's attitude towakd science. 91 

practical and material knowledge, — Mathematics, 
Physics, Political Economy — the adaptation of 
means to ends in the whole business of Hfe. In 
this province it is the indispensable servant, 
without which, indeed, existence itself would be 
impossible. Let it not step beyond this pro\'ince, 
however ; not usurp the province of Reason, 
W'hicli it is appointed to obey, and cannot rule 
over without ruin to the whole spiritual man. 
Should Understanding attempt to prove the ex- 
istence of God, it ends, if thorough-going and 
consistent with itself, in Atheism, or a faint pos- 
sible Theism, which scarcely diflers from this: 
should it speculate of Virtue, it ends in Utility, 
making Prudence and a sufficiently cunning love 
of Self the highest good. Consult Understanding 
about the Beauty of Poetry, and it asks. Where 
is this Beauty ? or discovers it at len<jrth in 
rhythms and fitnesses, and male and female 
rhymes. Witness also its everlasting paradoxes 
on Necessity and the Freedom of the Will ; its 
ominous silence on the end and meaning of man ; 
and the enigma which, under such inspection, 
the w^hole purport of existence becomes." * 

Carlyle's chief interest in the efforts and re- 
sults of the Kantean Philosophy in particular, 



Carlyle's Essay on the State of German Literature, i>. 67-70. 



92 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

and of German Idealism in general, concerns it- 
self less — as a consequence of the "whole tendency 
of his religious "vdews — with the " theories of per- 
ceptions " than with ethical and religious doc- 
trines. 

We do not wish to say anything of these views 
which this philosophy reveals of the course and 
development of the natural sciences, but we can- 
not refrain from stating that for those who fol- 
low it, its effects upon Ethics and Religion are 
incalculable. 

" The Critical Philosophy has been regarded 
as the greatest intellectual achievement of the 
century in which it came to light. August Wil- 
helm Schlegel, whose opinion has a known value 
for the English, has stated in plain terms his 
belief, that in respect of its probable influence 
on the moral culture of Europe, it stands on a 

line with the Eeformation The noble 

system of morality, the purer theology, the lofty 
views of man's nature derived from it, nay, per- 
haps the very discussion of such matters, to which 
it gave so strong an impetus, have told with re- 
markable and beneficial influence on the whole 
spiritual character of Germany. No -wTiter of any 
importance in that country, be he acquainted or 
not with the Critical Philosophy, but breathes a 
spirit of devoutness and elevation more or less 



carlyle's attitude toward science. 93 

clirectlv di'awn from it. Such men as Goetlie and 
Scliiller cannot exist without effect in any liter- 
ature or in any century : but if one circumstance 
more than another has contributed to forward 
their endeavours, and introduce that higher tone 
into the literature of Germany, it has been this 
philosophical system ; to which, in wisely believ- 
ing its results, or even in wisely denying them, 
all tliat was lofty and pure in the genius of poetry, 
or the reason of man,. so readily allied itself. " * 

Thus Carlyle attaches the very highest impor- 
tance to the Kantean Philosophy. It is now 
only necessary to show that, in his eyes, Kant's 
gi'cat successors have no really striking differ- 
ences. The only thing which in the systems of 
Fichte, Schelliug and Hegel, Carlyle considered 
great and remarkable was the Idealism inter- 
woven in them all ; in other respects he charac- 
terized them simply as " these Kantean systems." 

He was rather more, however, attached to 
Fichte, whose manly bearing filled him with the 
greatest reverence, than to any of the other 
philosophers. 

" The cold, colossal, adamantine spirit, stand- 
ing erect and clear, like a Cato Major among 
degenerate men ; fit to have been the teacher of 



* Carlyle's Essay on the State of German Literature, p. 66. 



94 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

the Stoa, and to have discoursed of Beauty and 
Yirtue in the gi-oves of Academe ! We state 
Fichte's character, as it is known and admitted 
by men of all parties among the Germans, when 
we say that so robust an intellect, a soul so calm, 
so lofty, massive and immovable, has not mingled 
in philosophical discussion since the time of 
Luther. We figure his motionless look, had ho 
heard the charge of mysticism which was made 
against him in England. For the man rises be- 
fore us, amid contradiction and debate, like a 
gi-anite mountain amid clouds and wind. Ridi- 
cule, of the best that could be commanded, has 
been already tried against him ; but it could not 
avail. What was the wit of a thousand Avits to 
him ? The cry of a thousand choughs a.ssaidting 
that old cliff of granite : seen from the sunmiit, 
these, as they winged the midway air, showed 
scarce so gross as beetles, and their cry was sel- 
dom even audil)le. Fichte's opinions may be true 
or false ; but his character, as a thinker, can be 
slightly valued only by such as know it ill ; and 
as a man, approved by action and suffering, in 
his life and in his death, he ranks with a class 
of men who were common only in better ages 
than GUI'S."* 



* Carlyle's Essay on the State of German Literature, pp. 65-66. 



carlyle's attitude toward science. 95 

Carlyle's aspirations were akin to Fichte's, 
and as their sj^iritual development was similar, 
Fichte miTst have attracted Carlyle, and uncon- 
sciously exerted a great influence on him. 

"We should be going too far if we attempted to 
trace back to Fichte certain peculiarities of Car- 
lyle's phraseology, and many of his important 
utterances (this was actually done in several in- 
stances by Novalis' instrumentality), but it is 
nevertheless worthy of remark that Carlyle's 
" Natural Superuaturalism " bears the strongest 
resemblance to Fichte's idealism. 

Similar to Fichte, his doctrine — founded upon 
the " Divine Idea of the world which lies at the 
bottom of Appearances " reached its climax in the 
Ethical and the Religious. 

And when Fichte says : " After all, this accord- 
ing to my doctrine, is the true character of the 
truly religious man. There is but one desire that 
swells his breast and inspires his mind — the hap- 
piness of all soul-inspired creatures. Thy king- 
dom come ! is his prayer ; besides this nothing 
has the least charm for him He has become in- 
sensible to the possibility of longing for anything 
else. He recognizes but one way of furthering 
this ideal, that of following the voice of his con- 
science in all his actions, unwaveringly, Avithout 
fear or sophistry. This links him again to the 



96 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

world, not as an object of enjoyment, but as a 
spliere for conscientious living pointed out by his 
inner voice ; " if Ficlite advances this as his ideal 
of a morally religious man — an ideal, however, 
which may be applied to any man — we do nof 
see how Carlyle's ideal could be better formulated. 

The significance of Schelling's and Hegel's 
systems for Carlyle retreats to the backgi'ouud. 
ScheUing's philosophy had fascinated him, to be 
sure, in those days of bitter doubt, when he was 
trying to formulate his own ideas of life. In his 
Journal and Letters we occasionally meet with 
his name, but Carlyle's opinion in regard to him 
is generally expressed too vaguely for us to say 
that Scholling had any permanent influence upon 
his mind. He said once about him : " He is a 
man evidently of deep insight into individual 
things ; speaks wisely and reasons with the nicest 
accuracy on all matters where we understand 
his data." '■' 

In England, Schelling's influence was much 
more important on Coleridge and his followers 
than on Carlyle. 

In regard to Hegel Carlyle never expressed 
himself even as clearly, so that his position with 
reference to him cannot be any more accurately 



* Carlyle's Essay on the State of German Literature, p. 65. 



caPvLyle's attitude toward science. 97 

defined. " He puts a liigli estimation upon 
him," ^ as Fronde says, and we shall soon dis- 
cover that there is one subject on which the two 
men agree, without daring to draw any inference 
from it. 

However greatly Carlyle respected the various 
representatives of German Idealism, and hoAvever 
deeply he was impressed by them, we must never- 
theless here, at the conclusion of our reflections 
on his attitude toward philosophy, again call es- 
pecial attention to the fact that he acknowledged 
no ultimate end in the whole of the idealistic 
systematic speculation. 

In his " Essay on Characteristics," Carlyle 
speaks of "the disease of metaphysics," and 
expresses the opinion that " man is sent hither 
not to question, but to work ; " and he even 
goes so far as to say that " the mere existence 
and necessity of a philosophy is an evil ; " that 
except as Poetry and Religion, it would have no 
being. 

"Metaphysical Speculation, if a necessary evil, 
is the forerunner of much good .... for of 
our Modern Metaphysics, accordingly, may not 
this already be said, that if they have produced 
no Afiirmation, they have destroyed much Nega- 



* Froude's Carlyle, vol. ii., chap. 2. 



98 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

tion ? It is a disease expelliug a disease : the 
fire of Doubt, consumiug awaj the Doubtful ; 
that so the Certain come to light, aud again lie 
visible on the surface. English or French Meta- 
physics, in reference to this last stage of the 
Speculative process, are not what we allude to 
here ; but only the Metaphysics of the Germans. 
In France or England, since the days of Diderot 
and Hume, though all thought has been of a 
sceptico-meta])hysical texture, so far as there 
was any Thought, we have seen no Metaphysics, 
but only more or less inefl'ectual questions whether 
such could be. In the Pyrrhonism of Hume and 
the Materialism of Didorot, Logic had, as it 
were, overshot itself, overset itself. Now though 
the athlete, to use our old figure, cannot, by 
much lifting, lift up his own body, he may shift 
it out of a laming posture, aud get to stand in a 
free one. 

*' Such a service have German Metaphysics 
done for man's mind. The second sickness of 
Speculation has abolished both itself and the 
first. Friedrich Schlegel complains much of the 
fruitlessness, the tumult and transiency of Ger- 
man as of all Metaphysics ; and with reason. 
Yet in that wide-spreading, deep-whirling vortex 
of Kantism, so soon metamorphosed into Fichte- 
ism, Schellingism, and then as Hegelism, and 



carlyle's attitude toward science. 99 

Coiisinism, perhaps finally evaporated, is not this 
issue visible enough, that Pyrrhonism and Ma- 
teriahsm, themselves necessary phenomena in 
European culture, have disappeared ; and a Faith 
in Rehgion has again become possible and in- 
evitable for the scientific mind ; and the word 
J^ree-thinkcr no longer means the Denier or Cav- 
iller, but the BeHever, or the Ready to believe ? 
Nay, in the higher Literature of Germany, there 
ah-eady hes, for him that can read it, the begin- 
ning of a new revelation of the GodHke ; as yet 
unrecognised by the mass of the world; but 
waiting there for recognition, and sure to find 
it when the fit hour comes. This age is not 
wholly ^\ithout its prophets." * 



* Carlyle's Essay on Characteristics, pp. 35-3G. 



CHAPTER yil. 

CARLYLE'S CONCEPTION OF POETUY 
AND ART IN GENERAL. 

Literature is but a branch of Religion, and always participates 
in its character ; however in our time it is the only branch that 
still shows any greenness ; and as some think must one day be- 
come the main stem. — Carlyle's Essay on Characteristics, p. 20. 

Poetry is another form of Wisdom.— Carlyle's Essay on Burns, 
p. 49. 

" And knowest thou no Prophet, even in tho 
vesture, environmeut, and dialect of this age ? 
None to whom the Godlike had revealed itself, 
through all meanest and highest forms of tho 
Common ; and by him been again prophetically 
revealed : in whose inspired melody, even in these 
rag-gathering and rag-burning days, Man's Life 
again begins, were it Ijut afar off, to be divine ? 
Knowest thou none such ? I know him, and 
name him — Goethe." * 

And this it is, " in Goethe and more or less 
in Schiller and tho rest," which gives the most 



* Sartus Resartus, bk. iii., chap. 7. 



caklyle's conception of poetry and art. 101 

essential feature of Carlyle's conception of tlio 
nature of the i^oet. " The coldest sceptic, the 
most callous worldling, sees not the actual as- 
pects of life more sharply than they are hero 
deUneated : the Nineteenth Century stands be- 
fore us, in all its contradiction and perplexity; 
barren, mean and baleful, as we have all known 
it ; yet here no longer mean and barren, but 
enamelled into beauty in the poet's spirit; for 
its secret significance is laid open, and thus, as 
it were, the life-giving fire that slumbers in it 
is called forth, and flowers and fohage, as of 
old, are springing on its bleakest wilderness, and 
overmantling its sternest clifls. For these men 
have not only the clear eye, but the loving heart. 
They have penetrated into the mystery of Nature ; 
after long trial they have been initiated ; and 
to unwearied endeavour. Art has at last yielded 
her secret ; and thus can the Spirit of our Age, 
embodied in fair imaginations, look forth on us, 
earnest and full of meaning, from their works. 
As the first and indispensible condition of good 
poets, they are wise and good men : much they 
have seen and suft'ered, and they have conquered 
all this, and made it all their own ; they have 
known life in its heights and depths, and mas- 
tered it in both, and can teach others what it 
is, and how to lead it rightly. Their minds are 



102 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

as a mirror to ns, when the perplexed image of 
our own being is reflected back in soft and clear 
interpretation. Here mirth and gl•rt^^ty are blend- 
ed together ; wit rests on deep devout wisdom, 
as the green-sward with its flowers must rest on 
the rock, whose foundations reach downward to 
the centre. In a word, they are believers ; but 
their faith is no sallow plant of darkness ; it is 
green and flowery, for it grows in the sunlight. 
And this faith is the doctrine they have to teach 
us, the sense which, under every no1)le and grace- 
ful form, it is their endeavour to set forth : 

"As ftll Nature's thousand chanf^es 

But one changeless God proclaim, 
So in Art's wide kingdoms ranges 

One solo meaning, still the same : 
This is Truth, eternal lleason, 

Which from Beauty takes its dress. 
And, serene through time and season, 

Stands for aye in lovliness. " 

Such, indeed, is the end of Poetry at all times ; 
yet in no recent literature known to us, except 
the German, has it been so far attained ; nay, 
perhajis, so much as consciously and steadfastly 
attempted." * 

To this conception of the poet's calling which 
we constantly meet with in his works, Carlyle 



State of German Literature, p. 56. 



CARLYLE'S conception of rOETRY AND ART. 103 

raised himself tlirougli tlie fervent stndy of Goethe 
and Schiller. One can easily picture to one's 
self how the ^Scotch peasant's son, reared among 
stern, primitive and very circumscribed notions 
of things, at first incredulously opposed Goethe's 
and Schiller's resthetics. Goethe's idea of art, 
his " almost religious love for it " appears at first 
to Carlyle to be " odd, inexplicable." He im- 
agines that in Germany, as well as in other 
countries, the poet is diflferently regarded. But 
in the spring of 1830 we find in his Journal — 
perhaps with direct bearing upon Goethe's gen- 
tle Xenie — * the following remarkable words : 
" "Who possesses science and art, has also Reli- 
gion ; who does not possess either, he must have 
Religion." 

" What is art and poetry ? Is the beautiful 
higher than the good ? A higher foi'm thereof ? 
Thus were a poet not only a priest, but a high- 
priest." " "NMien Goethe and Schiller say or in- 
sinuate that art is higher than religion, do they 
mean perhaps this? That whereas religion re- 
presents (what is the essence of truth for man) 
the good is injinitely (the word is emphatic) dif- 



* "Xenie" was ft name given to satirical epigrams used by 
Goethe and Schiller; but the "gentle Xenie" was used solely 
by Goethe. 



104 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

ferent from the evil, but sets them in a state 
of hostility (as in heaven and hell), art likewise 
admits and inculcates this quite infinite difterence, 
but without hostility, with peacefulness, like the 
difference of two poles which cannot coalssce 
yet do not quarrel — nay, should not quarrel, for 
both are essential to the whole. In this way is 
Goethe's moraHty to be considered as a higher 
(apart from its comprehensiveness, nay, univer- 
saUty) than has hitherto been promidgated ? 
Sehr einseitig I And yet perhaps there is a 
glimpse of the truth here." * 

The germ of Goethe's and Schiller's doctrine 
of the beauty and subUmity of the poet's calling, 
became still faiiher developed in Carlyle. It re- 
ceived noiirishment through the study of Mil- 
ton, to whom at this time he was devoting him- 
self. In Milton he found — as well as the deepest 
religious and ]uiritanical sentiments — ideas which 
he could bring into harmony with those of 
Goethe's, He was particularly impressed by the 
pecuUar didactic tendency which Milton dis- 
played as a poet. The nobleness of the moral 
claim ennobled the question of the poet's calling 
in the eyes of the primitive but prejudiced Scotch 
mind ; the claim that he who expressed the hoj)e 



* Fronde's Life of Carlyle, vol. ii., p. 17. 



carlyle's conception of poetry and art. 105 

of becoming a great poet and of wi'iting " pure 
and sublime thoughts " ought himself to be " a 
true poem," a pattern of " the best and honour- 
ablest things." * 

As Milton's ideal for the poet is not realizable 
in " the heat of youth or the vapours of wine," 
as his ideal is not supported by the " invocation 
of dame Memory and her siren daughters " he 
considers the gift lent him " but by devout prayer 
to that Eternal Spirit who can enrich with all 
utterance and knowledge, and sends out His 
seraphim with the hallowed fire of His altar, to 
touch and purify the lips of whom He pleases." t 

These Miltonic ideals, which in Germany Klop- 
stock had represented, appear to stand in sharp 
contrast to Goethe's and Schiller's aesthetic views, 
and form a very prominent part of Carlyle's. 

He considers the poet to be "an inspired think- 
er," X a soul who performs heavenly music ; his 
mission is to sing the glory of God. True poetry 
is a holy, divine, inspired thing. The essential 
element of the poet is, according to Carlyle, re- 
ligion ; and this view at once makes it clear 
what Carlyle's standpoint is as to the question 



* Milton's Apology for Smectymniis, (ed. Bohn) p. 118. 
t Second book of Keason of Church Government, (ed. Fletch- 
er) introductory paragraph, p. 44. 
X Essay on the Death of Goethe. 



lOG THOMAS CARLYLE. 

of the relation of Poetry to Religion. Car- 
lyle's idea here exactly coincides with Hegel's, 
who represents " the Fine Arts only as a degree 
of freedom, not as the highest freedom itself," 
and points out to the " Fine Arts " its " future 
in true religion." And when Schiller, impressed 
by the feeling of the highest unity of the nnn-al, 
the religious and the beautiful (in the Ideal), 
uses the words : " The healthy and beautiful 
nature needs no morality, no metaphysics," * 
you could just as well say it needs no divine, 
no immortality upon which to repose and main- 
tain itself. 

This form of expression would not have met 
with favour in Carlvle's eves, for he would have 
rei)lied that healthy morality and religiousness 
needs no beauty — it has and comprehends the 
only true beauty in itself. It was exactly this 
religious element which was an inner strength 
to Carlyle, to the poet and to all men, giving 
solidity without enchaining. And if he beUeved 
that religion was tlie essence, the unconsciously 
living element of the poet, he was, nevertheless, 
far from wishing to make it bend to the yoke 
of any especial religious views. As the moral 
law and the moral duty do not cause man to 



♦ Schiller and Goethe's Correspondence, 



carlyle's conception of foetry and art. 107 

deteriorate, but lielp to elevate and give liini 
freedom, in the same way does the Divine, if 
it penetrates the poet, not oppress, but gives him 
its sanction. 

" Ever must the Fine Arts be if not rehgion, 
yet indissohibly united to it, dependent on it, 
virtually blended with it, as body is with soul." " 

" Poetry is but another form of "Wisdom, of 
Religion ; is itself AVisdom and Eeligion," that 
" unspeakable beauty which in its highest clear- 
ness is Religion." t 

These utterances, and those which follow, show 
that Carlyle's views are not materially different 
fi-om Goethe's : " Art rests upon a sort of re- 
ligious sense, upon a dt-ep, immutablo earnest- 
ness, on account of which it so willingly is united 
to Relif^ion. Religion needs no Art-Sense — it 
rests upon its own earnestness," but it gives as 
little as it produces. X And his aphorisms on 
the History of the Arts, of the year 1808, wo 
by no means wish to quote as a mere expression 
of a view : " Art has, properly speaking, origin- 
ated out of and in Religion." § 



* Carlyle's Essay on Jesuitism, p. 271. 
■j- Carlyle's Essay on History. 
I Spruohc in Prosa, (Leoper) p. 690. 
§0p. cit, p. 147. 



108 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

That Carlylc did not at all make the poetical 
endowment dependent on the reli<:fions feeling, 
must be explicitly stated, for it is not by any 
means a gift to clothe the reUgious feeling in 
verse. 

" Poetry is Inspiration : has in it a certain 
S])iritualitj — it is no separate faculty, no organ 
which can bo superadded to the rest, or dis- 
joined from them ; but rather the result of their 
general harmony and comjileteuess. The feelings, 
the gifts that exist in the Poet are those that ex- 
ist in every human soul. The imagination whicli 
sluuhhrs at the Hell of Dante, is the same fac- 
ulty, weaker in degree, which called that picture 
into being. How does the Poet s})eak to men, 
with power, but by being still more a man than 
they ? " * 

Carlyle seems to prefer to designate the poet 
by one word — Vates — which he again and again 
uses. Let us try to comprehend his ideal. 

" The true poet is ever, as of old, the Seer ; 
whoso eye has l)een gifted to discern the godlike 
mystery of God's Universe, and to deci})lier some 
new lines of its celestial \\Titing ; we can still call 
him a Yates and Seer ; for ho sees into this 
greatest of secrets, ' the open secret ; ' hidden 



* Essay on Buru.s, vol. ii.-, p. 18. 



carlyle's conception of poetry and art. 109 

tilings become clear ; how the future (both rest- 
ing on Eternity) is but another phase of the Pre- 
sent : thereby are his words in very truth pro- 
phetic ; what he has spoken shall be done." * 

The gi-eatest gift which can fall to the lot of one 
man — as Prophet and JSecr — fell to the " Yates : " 
that of reveahng " Poetic Beauty." t " As the 
material Seer is the eye and revealer of all things, 
so is Poetry, so is the "World-Poet, in a spiritual 
sense." t He, the World-Poet, is the only true 
iuterpreter of the invisible, the Eternal, as it is 
revealed in the world. He has not far to seek 
for material, for the ideal world is not separat- 
ed from the material world, but permeates and 
fills it. 

" Wherever there is a sky above him, and a 
world around him, the poet is in his place ; for 
here, too, is man's existence, with its infinite 
longings and small recpiirings ; its ever-thwarted, 
ever-renewed endeavours, its unsjieakable asi)ira- 
tions, its fears and hopes that wander through 
Eternity ; and all the mystery of brightness and 
of gloom that it was ever made of, in any ago 
or climate, since man first began to live. Is there 



* Essay on Death of Goethe, p. 44. 

t Biography, p. 59. 

t Essay on Death of Goethe, p. 43. 



110 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

not the fifth act of a Tragedy iu eveiy death- 
bed, though it were a peasant's, and a bed of 
heath ? And are ^vooiugs and ^veddings obsolete, 
that there can be Comedy no longir ? Or are 
men suddenly gi-own wise, that Langhtor must no 
longer shake his sides, but be cheated of his 
Farce ? Man's Hfe and nature is, as it was, and 
as it ever will }n\ But the poet must have an 
eye to read these things, and a heart to under- 
stand them ; or they come and pass away Ix'- 
fore him in vain, H«' is a Vufcs, a seer ; a gift 
of vision has been given him. Has life no mean- 
ings for him, which another cannot eiiually de- 
cii)her ; then he is no poet, and Delphi itself 
will not make him one." * 

Prophet and Poet are for Carlyle of one stock, 
and according to his opinion it is only an indi- 
cation of a ]H'rv('rsely developed epoch which 
could bo bliinh'd to this unity. 

" They both have penetrated into the sacred 
mystery of the Universe ; what Goethe calls 
* the open secret.' * The oj)e?i secret,' open to 
all, seen by almost none ! That divine mystery, 
which lies everywhere in all Beings, the * Divine 
Idea of the World,' that which Hes at the 'bot- 
tom of appearance,' as Fichte styles it ; of which 



* Essay on Burns, p. 13. 



CAELYLE'S CONCErXION OF POETRY A2^D ART. Ill 

all appearances, from the starry sky to the grass 
of the field, but especially the Appearance of 
Mail and his work, is but the vesture, the em- 
bodiment that renders it visible. This mystery 
is in all times and in all places ; veritably is. 
In most times and places it is greatly overlooked ; 
and the Universe, definable always in one or the 
other dialect, as the realised Thought of God, 
is considered as a trivial, inert, commonplace 
matter, — as if, says the Satirist, it wore a dead 
thing, which some upholsterer had put together ! 
It could do no good, at present, to speak much 
about this ; but it is a pit}- for ever}' one of us 
if we do not know it, live ever in the knowled<;e 
of it. Really a most mournful pity ; — a failure 
to live at all, if wo live otherwise! But now, I 
say, whoever may forget this divine mystery, 
the Vates, whether Prophet or Poet, has pene- 
trated into it ; is a man sent hither to make it 
more impressively known to us. That always 
is his message ; he is to reveal that to us, — 
that sacred mystery which he, more than others, 
lives ever present with. While others forget it, 
he knows it ; I might say, he has been driven 
to know it ; without consent asked of hhn, he 
finds himself living in it, bound to live in it. 
Once more, here is no Hearsay, but a direct 
Insight and BeUef ; this man, too, could not help 



112 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

being a sincere man ! Whoever may live in the 
shows of things, it is for him a necessity of nature 
to Uve in the very fact of things. A man once 
more, in earnest with the Universe, though all 
others were l)ut toying with it. He is a Vates, 
first of all, in virtue of being sincere. So far 
Poet and Prophet, participators in the * open se- 
cret,' are one. 

*' With respect to their distinction again : The 
Vates Prophet, we might s:iy, has siezed that 
sacred mystery rather on the moral side, as Good 
and Evil, Dutv and Proliibition ; the Vates Poet 
on what the Germans tiiU the a?sthetic side, as 
Beautiful, and the like. The one we call a re- 
vealer of what we are to do ; the other of what 
we are to love. But indeed these two provinces 
run into one another, and cannot be disjoined. 
The Prophet, too, has his eye on what we are 
to love : how else shall ho know what it is we are 
to do? The highest Voice ever heard on this 
earth said withal: 'Consider the lilies of the 
field ; they toil not, neither do they spin : yet 
Solomon in all his glory was not anayed like 
one of these ' — a glance, that, into the deepest 
deep of Beauty. 'The lilies of the field,' — dressed 
finer than earthly princes, springing up there 
in the humble furrow-field ; a beautiful eye look- 
ing-out on you, from the gieat inner Sea of 



CARLYLE's conception of rOETRY AND ART. 113 

Beauty ! How could the nide Earth make these, 
if her Essence, rugged as she looks and is, 
were not inwardly Beauty? In this point of 
view, too, a saying of Goethe's, which has stag- 
gered several, may have meaning : ' This Beauti- 
ful,' he intimates, ' is higher than the Good ; 
the Beautiful includes in it the Good.' The 
true Beautiful ; which, however, I have said some- 
where, ' differs from the false as Heaven does 
from Yauxhall!"* 

This research of Carlyle's apparently only leads 
to the conclusion that there is no difference be- 
tween true poetry and " true speech, not poet- 
ical," but Carlyle does not disappoint us here. 

" On this point many things have been written, 
especially by the late Gernum Critics, some of 
which are not very intelligible at first. They say, 
for example, that the Poet has an infinitude in 
him ; communicates an UnendlicJikeit, a cei-tain 
character of ' infinitude,' to whatsoever he de- 
lineates. This, though not very precise, yet in 
so vague a matter is worth remembering : if well 
meditated, some meaning will gi-adually be found 
in it. For my o\\t\ part, I find considerable 
meaning in the old vulgar distinction of Poetry 
being metrical, having music in it, being a Song. 



Carlyle's Lecture on Heroes, pp. 75-76. 



114 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

Truly, if pressed to give a definition, one might 
say this as soon as anything else : If your delinea- 
tion be authentically musical, miisical not in the 
word only, but in heart and substance, in all 
the thoughts and utterances of it, in the whole 
conception of it, then it will be poetical ; if not, 
not. — Musical : how much lies in that ! A 'inusical 
thought is one spoken by a mind that has pene- 
trated into the inmost heart of the thing ; de- 
tected the inmost mystery of it, namely, the 
inelody that lies hidden in it ; the inward har- 
mony of coherence jwhich is its soul, whereby it 
exists, and has a right to be, here in this world. 
All inmost things, we may say, are melodious ; 
naturally utter themselves in Song. The mean- 
ing of Song goes deep. Who is there that, in 
logical words, can express the effect that music 
has on us ? A kind of inarticulate unfathom- 
able speech, which leads us to the edge of the 
Infinite, and lets us for moments gaze into that! 
All speech, even the commonest speech, has 
something of song in it : not a parish in the world 
but has its parish-accent ; — the rhythm or tune 
to which the people there sing what they have 
to say ! Accent is a kind of chanting ; all men 
have an accent of their own, — though they only 
notice that of others. . , . . All deep things 
are Song. It seems somehow the very central 



carlyle's conception of poetry and art. 115 

essence of us, Song ; as if the rest were but wi*ap- 
page and hulls ! The primal element of us ; of 
us and of all things. The Greeks fabled of 
Sphere-Harmonies : it was the feeling they had 
of the inner structure of Nature ; that the soul 
of all her voices and utterances was perfect 
music. Poetry, therefore, we will call musical 
Thought. The Poet is he who thhiks in that 
manner. At bottom, it turns still on the power 
of intellect ; it is a man's sincerity and depth 
of vision that makes him a Poet. See deep 
enough, and you see musically ; the heart of 
Nature heing everywhere music, if you can only 
reach it." * 

So the poet is, according to Carlyle, naturally 
the deepest of all thinkers. Poetry is insight, 
a higher knowledge ; the true thinker alone 
is the poet, the Seer. Heavenly wisdom pos- 
sesses his Soul, fills his heart : it is the North 
Star which guides him through life independent 
of external success or of external worldly re- 
sults. 

" "We often hear of this and the other external 
condition being requisite for the existence of a 
poet. Sometimes it is a certain sort of training ; 



* On Heroes, p. 78. 



116 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

lie must have studied certain tilings, studied, for 
instance, ' the elder di-amatists,' and so learned 
a poetic language ; as if poetry lay in the tongue, 
not in the heart. At other times we are told he 
must be bred in a certain rank, and must be 
on a confidential footing with the higher classes ; 
because, above all things, he must see the world. 
As to seeing the world, we apprehend this will 
cause him little difficulty, if he have but eyesight 
to see it with The mysterious work- 
manship of man's heart, the true light and the 
inscrutable darkness of man's destinv, reveal 
themselves not only in capital cities and crowded 
saloons, but in every hut and hamkt where men 
have their abode." * 

It was " not personal enjoyment," freedom 
from care and a merry, jovial life which made 
him great, " but a high, heroic idea of lleligion, 
of Patriotism, of heavenly Wisdom, in one or the 
other form, in which cause he neither shrank 
from suffering, nor called on the earth to witness 
it as something wonderful ; but patiently endured, 
counting it blessedness enough so to spend and 
be spent." t 

On this subject Carlylc is continually waging 



* Essay on Burns, pp. 13-1-4. 
tOp. cit., p. 4H. 



CARLYLE'S conception of rOETRY AND ART. 117 

an iuternecme war against those wliom ho calls 
the " sweet singers." The poet's task is not to 
oflfer "pleasant singing" and to prepare " de- 
hghts" for the indolent. When "Fine Litera- 
ture" concerns itself with "the unspeakable 
glories and rewards of pleasing its generation," 
it becomes a degi-adation to Art, and has as little 
to do with it as where united vrith every pomp 
of the opera, of the stage and of music, it solely 
tries to become a slave to the vile amusement of 
the epoch. 

This explains Carlyle's merciless and often too 
severe judgment of almost all his contemporaries 
in English Literature. With the exception of 
Tennyson, Ruskin, Browning, Arthur Clough and 
a few others, his judgment is ahnost entirely an 
unfavourable one. The measure Avhich he used 
in forming an estimate of his ideal poets, Homer, 
^schulus, Dante, Shakspeare, Milton, Goethe 
and Schiller, he applied to all other poets in 
order to determine their absolute significance in 
history. Even such men as Bp'on and Burns, 
the latter especially his favourite, did not escape 
this tril)unal. 

His judgment of the professional, literary and 
art critics supplies us mth further information 
as to his conception of the relation of poetry and 
art in general. To quibble about a poem or an 



118 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

art work was not only distasteful to liim, but ap- 
peared a manifest liypocrisy and lie. 

" The Fine Arts become a Throne of Hypo- 
crisy." Falsehood reigns here sovereign, and 
covers the abyss with sparkling words. " The 
Fine Arts, wherever they turn up as h ashless, 
whatever Committee sit upon them, are sure to 
be parent of much empty talk, labourious hypo- 
crisy, dillettanteism, futility ; involving huge trou- 
ble and expense, and babble, which end in no 
result, if not in worse than none." * 

This single quotation is quite sufficient here. 
What justifies him in this anger is his own 
worth. His savage mood knows no boundaries 
in the attack against this modern " art-lie." The 
kernel of truth in this warfare is easily recog- 
nized and will retain its value, for certainly it 
will forever be better "to perambulate through a 
picture-gallery with little or no speech ; t but 
on the otlier hand, however, it must be strong- 
ly emphasized that Carlyle's understanding of 
Aii and interest in Aii — so far as the plastic 
ai-ts are concerned — was neither sufficiently ver- 
satile nor great to give an independent and 
worthy judgment. 



* Jesuitism, p. 272. 

f Carlyle's Life of Sterling, cliap. 7. 



cablyle's conception of poetry and art. 110 

Schiller was not asliamed to confess (in a letter 
to Humboldt, written on February ITtli, 1803) 
that " Italy and Kome are no countries for me ; 
the mere ' matter ' [das Phj'sische] would oppress 
me, and the mstJietic would j]jive me no delight, 
because an interest and feeling for the, plastic 
arts is wanting in me " — and similar was it with 
Carlyle, although he did not so openly acknowl- 
edge it, and would not modify his severe judg- 
ment of the " Gallery and Cathedral Visitors "■"' in 
Eome, when his criticism really only touches the 
fashionable foolery, and cannot at all be applied 
to such a spirit as Sterling, whose deepest in- 
terests in life were linked to the plastic arts. * 

The only work of art for which Carlyle really 
had a most perfect understanding and interest 
was the pcntrait, his deej) interest in which is 
proved already by the fact that it was he who 
first proposed the establishment of a national 
portrait gallery in Scotland. (He had sorely 
missed such an one in Berlin, where he had 
tried to become familiar with the time of Fred- 
erick the Great.) Further was this shown in a 
high degree in an Essay on the various portraits 
of John Knox. We seem too unappreciative of 
these delicate observations which we are indebted 



* Carlyle's Life of SterUng, pp. H8-154. 



120 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

to his pen for. It is sufficieut liere, however, 
to merely di'aw attention to his words on Cra- 
nach's portraits of Luther. The walls of his 
study were completely covered by the best and 
the most interestiu*^ portraits which he could 
prociu'e of all his " heroes." 



CHAPTER VIII. 
CARLYLE'S ATTITUDE TOW A ED 

uiSTunr. 

A confession made by Carlyle in his Journal 
of 1842 — of the publication of which he never 
dreamed — admits us into the most secret recesses 
of his thought and feeling : " Of Dramatic Art, 
though I have eagerly listened to a Goethe speak- 
ing of it, and to several hundreds of others mum- 
bling and trying to speak of it, I find that I, 
practically speaking, know yet almost as good 
as nothing. Indeed, of Art generally, {Kunst, so 
called) I can almost know nothing. My first 
and last secret of Knnst is to get a thorough 
intelligence oiWiQfdct to be painted, represented, 
or, in whatever way, set forth — the fact deep as 
Hades, high as heaven, and written so^ as to the 
visual face of it upon our poor earth. This once 
blazing within me, if it will ever get to blaze, 
and bursting to be out, one has to take the Avhole 
dexterity of adaptation one is master of, and 
with tremendous struggling, contrive to exhibit 



122 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

it, one -way or the other. This is not Art, I 
know well." * 

All of Carlvle's natural endowments led him 
into other channels than those of art in its ordi- 
nary sense : in histor}', in the study of mankind, 
he fonnd the aiTaugement of the Eternal most 
beantifully and divinely revealed. God was to 
him the only Artist whose works he cared to 
study with a religious and respectful spirit. 
Nature was gi-eat and di\'ine, but man seemed 
to him the divinest creation, and of man's life, 
his gi-owth and deveh^pment, his struggles and 
aspirations, his faitliful toil, his good fortune, his 
misfortune, and his final passing away, as it re- 
peats itself over and over again in the course of 
history, in powerful changes and yet in perpet- 
ual unity, that was to him " the eternal, constant 
Gospel " which his soul thirsted to understand, 
which fiHed his heart witli ]ioetrv, which stinni- 
lated every nerve, and whicli broke forth in all 
his works, and — althougli written in prose — made 
genuine poetic creations. 

History and the writing of liistory — considered 
from Carlyle's point of view — was the proper fiehl 
of activity for Carlyle's mind. He not only de- 
voted the gi-eater portion of his life and his best 



* Froudd 8 Life of Carlyle, Franklin Square Ed., vol. iii., p. 40. 



CARLYLE's attitude toward niST(3RY. 123 

years to it, but was indebted to it for liis repu- 
tation. 

The following quotations show liis comprehen- 
sion of history : " In the one little Letter of 
^neas Sylvius there is more of history than in 
all of Robertson." * " The thing I want to see 
is not Red Book Lists and Coui-t Calendars, and 
Parliamentary Registers, but the Life of Man : 
what men did and thought, suffered, enjoyed ; 
the form, especially the spirit, of their terrestrial 
existence, its outward environment, its inward 
principle ; hoin and what it was ; whence it pro- 
ceeded, whither it was tending. Mournful, in 
tnith, is it to behold what the business called 
* History,' in these so enlightened and illuminat- 
ed times, still continues to be. Can you gather 
from it, read till your eyes go out, any dimmest 
shadow of an answer to that great qiiestion : 
How men lived and had their being ; were it but 
economically, as, what wages they got, and what 
they bought with these ? " t 

History does not consist in relating coui-t iu' 
trigues and stories of Piimo Ministers and their 
countries ; it does not consist in the conscientious 
binding together of deeds or the best representa- 



* Carlyle's Essay on Bos well's Life of Johnson, p. 84. 
f Loc. cit. 



124 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

tiou of the development of the forms of State ; 
the object of the historian is to represent the 
inner conditions of life, the conscious and uncon- 
scious aspirations of mankind, which are never 
alike in two dissimilar ages. Not alone battles 
and war tumults, not alone laws and constitutions 
and their developments, which, nevertheless, " are 
not our Life, but only the house wherein our Life 
is led." * To contemplate all the long-forgotten 
and concealed acts and phenomena of the human 
species, to penetrate ' reverently ' the spiritual 
and physical nature, to depict what is of promise, 
that is task set before the historian. 

The most important part of history is, perhaps, 
not for one person to relate it in general, " for as 
all Action is, by its nature, to be figured as ex- 
tended in breadth and depth, as well as in length ; 
that is to sav, is based on Passion and M^ sterv, if 
we investigate its origin ; and spreads abroad on 
all hands, modif} ing and modified ; as well as 
advances towards completion, — so all narrative 
is, bv nattire, of only one dimension ; only travels 
forward towards us, or towards successive points : 
Narrative is linear. Action is soUiJ. Also for our 
* chains,' or chainlets, of ' canvas and effects,' " 
which we so assiduously track through certain 



* Carlyle's Essay on History, p. 255. 



CARLYLE S ATTITUDE TOWARD HISTORY. 125 

hand-breadths of years and square miles, when 
the whole is a broad, deep Immensity, and each 
atom is ' chained ' and complected wdth all ! 
Truly, if History is Philosophy teaching by ex- 
perience, the writer fitted to compose History is 
hitherto an unknown man. The Experience itT 
self would require All-knowledge to record it, — 
Avere the All-wisdom needful for such Philoso- 
phy as would interpret it to be had for ask- 
ing. Better were it that mere earthly Histori- 
ans should lower such pretensions, more suitable 
for Reminiscence than for human science ; and 
aiming only at some picture of the things acted, 
which picture itself will at best be a poor approx- 
imation, leave the inscrutable purport of them 
an acknowledged secret ; or at most, in reverent 
Faith, far difierent from that teaching of Philo- 
sophy, pause over the mysterious vestige of 
Him, whose path is in the gi-eat deep of Time 
whom History indeed reveals, but only all His- 
tory, and in Eternity, will clearly reveal." * 

These opinions do not blunt the ardour of the 
investigator ; they only inspii-e him wdth a desire 
to search more and more into the past. " Let all 
men explore it as the true foiintain of knowledge ; 
by whose light alone, consciously or unconscious- 



Carlyle's Ejsay on Historj', p. 258. 



12G THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

ly employed, can the Present or the Future be 
interpreted or guessed." * 

This ideal of the science of history admits of a 
distinction between the Artist and Artisan ; the 
one ' labours ' mechanically in his department 
without turning his eye upon the whole, perhaps 
without feeling that there is a whole ; the other 
informs and ennobles the humbhst sphere in life 
with an idea of the whole, and habitually knows 
tliat only in the whole is the }>artial to be truly 
discerned. The tasks and the duties of these 
two are entirely ditierent, and each has his dctin- 
ite work, '* The simide husbandman can till his 
Held, and by knowledge he has gained of its soil, 
sow it with the lit grain, though the deej) rocks 
and central tires are unknown to him : his little 
crop hangs under and over the firmament of 
stars, and sails through untracked celestial 
spaces, between Aries and Libra ; nevertheless 
it ripens for him in due season and he gathers 
it safe into his l)arn. As ;i husbandman ho is 
blameless in disregarding those higher wonders; 
but as a tliinker, and faithful impiirer into Nat- 
lu'e, he were wrong. So, likewise, is it with the 
Historian, who examines some sjiecial aspect of 
History ; and from this or that combination of 



* Carlyles Essay on History, p. 258. 



carlyle's attitude toward history. 127 

circumstances, — political, moral, economical, — and 
the issues it has led to, infers that such and such 
properties belong to human society ; and that 
the Uke circumstances will produce the like issue ; 
which inference, if other trials confirm it, must 
be held true and practically valuable. He is 
wrong only, and an artisan, when he fancies that 
these properties, discovered or discoverable, ex- 
haust the matter ; and sees not at every step, 
that it is inexhaustible. 

" However, that class of cause-and-efi'ect spec- 
ulators, mth whom no wonder would remain 
wonderful, but all things in Heaven and Earth 
must bo computed and ' accounted for ; ' and 
even the Unknown, the Infinite in man's Life, 
had under the words enthusiasm, siqyerstitioriy 
spirit of the age, and so forth, obtained, as it 
were, an algebraical symbol and given value, — 
have now well-nigh played their paii in European 
culture ; and may be considered, as in most 
countries, even in England itself, where they 
linger the latest, verging toward extinction." * 

" The Political Historian, once almost the sole 
cultivator of History, has now found various 
associates, who strive to elucidate other phases 
of liuman Life ; of which, as hinted above, the 



* Carlyle's Essay on History, p. 259. 



128 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

political conditions it is passed under are but 
one, and though the primary, perhaps not the 
most important, of the many outward arrange- 
ments. Of this Historian himself, moreover, in 
his own special department, new and higher 
things are beginning to be expected. From of 
(jld, it was too often to be reproaclifully observed 
of him, that he dwelt with disproportionate fond- 
ness in Senate-houses, in Battle-tields, nay, even 
in Kings' Antechambers ; forgetting that far 
awa>' from such scenes, the mighty tide of 
Thought and Action was still rolling on its won- 
drous course, in gloom and brightness; and in 
its thousand remote valleys, a wliolo world of 
Existence, witli or without an earthl}' sun of Hap- 
piness to warm it, with or without a heavenly sun 
of Holiness to ])iirify and sanctify it, was blos- 
soming and fading, whether the ' famous vic- 
tory ' were won or lost. The time seems coming 
when much of this must be amended." * 

"What ennobled liistory for Carlyle was the 
" Intinite in human Life," the higliest revelation 
of the diWne Spirit, as it was revealed and was 
to bo seen in human nature. " Wherever there 
is a Man, a God also is revealed, and all that 
is Godlike : a whole epitome of the Intinite with 



♦ Carlyle's Essay on History, pp. 259-260. 



carlyle's attitude toward history. 129 
its meanings, lies enfolded in the Life of every 



man. * 



To discern truly this revelation, a " seer " was, 
of course, necessary : and it is just here where, 
according to Carlyle, the same talent must be- 
come a part of both the poet and the truly great 
historian. This is the point at which history 
becomes true poetry, where true poetry consists 
in the right interpretation of truth, and of fact, t 

Poetry, in the sense of fiction, of idle " inven- 
tion," is not comparable with truth ; the poet's 
invention does not consist in the creation of 
di'eamy and fanciful forms ; it consists rather in 
the after-creation, in the new revelation of divine 
thought, as it lies at the foundation of the ap- 
pearances of the world and the world's history. 
"An iEschylus or a Sophocles sang the tintesi 
(which was also the divinest) they had been 
privileged to discover here below." X 

According to Carlyle's idea, only a Shakspeare 
or a Homer can discover the infinite meaning 
of history, of human life. The true historical 
writing is that " mighty, world-old Hhupsodia of 
Existence, the grand, sacred Epos, or Bible of 
World-History, infinite in meaning as the Divine 

* Essay on Biogiapby, p. 58. 

t Essay on Boswell's Life of Johnson, p. 82. 

X Essay on The Opera, p. 124. 



130 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

Mind it Emblems ; wherein be is wise that can 
read here a line, and there a line." * 

" Great men are the inspired Texts of that 
divine Book of Eevelatiou." t They, the great 
men, the " heroes," to use Carlyle's terminology, 
give their intrinsic worth to the world and the 
world's histor}' ; they are the heai-t, the kernel 
around which everything revolves ; they are, in 
a certain sense, the creators of everything which 
the mass of people perform ; they give the ideals, 
and arc the soul of the Avorld's history. X 

Wo pause here where the celebrated and vari- 
ously maligned /Ave - If cr.s/^//? ofters an explana- 
tion. 

Carlyle's Hero-Worship rests upon the convic- 
tion that (if the germ of the Divine is innate in 
mankind yet) only the chosen, the " Heroes," 
whose duty it is to bring truth to victory, are 
sent from heaven to awaken dormant powers, the 
heroes whose command the world must listen to, 
for theu' message comes directly from heaven. 
It is this belief of Carlyle's, finding representa- 
tives among the leading minds of every ago, 
which, followed out even in gi-eat ruggeduess, 
cannot possibly be settled by the once thrown 



* Essay on Count CftRliostro, p. 65. 
t Sartor Resftrtus, bk. ii., p. 122. 
X Essay on Heroes, i. 



carlyle's attitude toward history. 131 

out vindication of mere strength and force. It 
is not here the place to examine more critically 
this charge ; even as little is it the place to ex- 
plain the difference of Carlyle's principles from 
those of Buckle. It is sufficient to point out 
that Carlyle never was a representative of mere 
" strength and force." He recognizes only one 
power, and that is truth and morality ; a truth 
■whose victory must be won by every sacritice, 
by life and by blood ; whose victory is the cer- 
tain hope of all human struggles and battles. 
" li'xjht is the eternal symbol of mighty Right 
gives might and power — is his motto, indeed. 
JkUjlit shall carry ott' the victory which mhjht has 
won. With this belief in the victory of good over 
evil in the long nin ; in tlio ^^ctory of good as 
the hero as])ires to it, and for which tla^ hero 
sacritices himself, stands or falls his whole view 
of life. We see that this cheerful and noble recog- 
nition of " the heroic " in history can frighten 
only the indolent nature into moral lethargy. 

Considered from Carlyle's standpoint, the les- 
son which history teaches is unparalleled : the 
world's history is a message from the past to 
teach us to understand the present and the fu- 
ture ; it consists — as Kingsley has expressed it — - 



* And Kingsley's words are, indeed, the formulation of Car- 
lyle's ideas. 



132 THOMAS CAKL\XE. 

" in the overwlielming and yet ennobling knowl- 
edge that there was such a thing as Duty, tirst 
taught me to see in history, not the mere farce- 
tragedy of man's crimes and follit'S, but the deal- 
ings of a righteous Ruler of the Universe, whose 
ways are in the great deep, and whom the sin 
and errors, as well as the virtues and discoveries 
of man, must obey and justify." 

In this way Aristotle's comparison of the poet 
and historian linds explanation with Carlyle. 
If the task is pointed out, then to the histor- 
ian," TO yevofieva Xt'yeiVy and to the poet to repre- 
sent ola dv yivoirOy and if Sio koL <pi/.ooo(pu)repov koI 
n-cv6aiuTEpnv iroiTjni^ larofiia^ lariVy Carlyle, with 
his immutable views of the invariable govern- 
ment, according to the moral principles of an 
always judicial God, would have nothing to say 
but that, in general, only the " philosopliical and 
the earnest man " is able to understand the 
world's historv, that the task to consider Avhat 
*' might have happened " or " ought to have 
happened" was far beyond the capacity of any 
man, but that it belongtul to every man to seri- 
ously endeavour to und«M-stand the revelation of 
God and the Universe trs it exiiftn, and historv 
as it takes place before; our very eyes ; to under- 

* roetics, ix. 



caelyle's attitude toward history. 133 

stand that there is no " greater truth " and no 
smaller truth, but only one truth, and that the 
one revealed in the world's history, in the history 
of mankind ; truths, to be sure, only discernable 
to the wise, to the true poet and the true liis- 
torian, whose common ideal is the recognition of 
exactly this thing, which each in his o^^^l way 
strives to reach and to teach to a struggling 
world. Thus does Carlyle apprehend the higher, 
indeed, the highest unity of poet and historian, 
a unity wliich consists in this common ideal, al- 
though their ways of expressing it may be differ- 
ent, a unity that would ehule every eye — but 
which was seen and felt and expressed by Goethe 
himself : 

*• Wer in der Weltgeschichte lebt, 
Dem AuKenblick sollt or sich riclitcn ? 
Wer in die Zeitcu schnnt uml Ktrebt, 
Nur der ist weit, zu spreclitu und zu dicbten." 



CHAFTEK IX. 
CARLYLE'S ETHICS. 

" The Gospel of AVork." 

Man must work as well as worship.- Sartor Hesartiis, p. 2.')0. 

With those .... who in true manful endeavour, were 
it under despotism or under sansculottism, create somewhat, 
with those alone, in the end, does the hope of the world lie. — 
Carlyle's Essay on Goethe's Works, p. 182. 

After liavinp; attempted to compreliend the 
various and important aspects of Carlyle's views, 
there oulj remains for ns now the task of p*as])- 
ing, in as few words as possible, his complete 
moral doctrines which have been expressed by 
himself in the simplest and best manner : 

" Love not Pleasure, love God ! This is the 
Everlasting Yea, wherein all contradiction is 
solved ; wherein whoso walks and works, it is 
well with him." * 

The duty laid upon us by God to recognize 
the moral " work " enjoined upon us by heaven, 



* Sartor Eesartus, p. 133. 



carlyle's ethics. 135 

and to perform this according to our light, that 
is the familiar doctrine which Carlyle, with his 
whole energy, with each page which he wrote, 
tried to preach afresh to the world. 

The first step to the fulfilment of this duty is 
the recognition of it. 

" If called to define Shakspeare's faculty, I 
should say superiority of Intellect, and think I 

had included all under that We talk 

of faculties as if they were distinct things separ- 
able; as if a man had intellect, imagination, fancy, 
etc., as ho has hands, feet, and arms. That is a 
capital error. Then, again, we hear of a man's 
' intellectual nature,' and of his ' moral nature,' 
as if these, again, were divisil)le, and existed apart. 
. . . . We ought to know ^vithal, and to keep 
forever in mind tli.it these divisions are at bottom 
but names; that man's spiritual nature, the vital 
Force which dwells in him, is essentially one and 
indivisible ; that what we call imagination, fancy, 
understanding, and so forth, are but difterent fig- 
ures of the same Power of Insight, all indissolu- 
bly connected with each other, physiognomically 

related Morality itself, what we call 

the moral quality of a man, what is this but 
another side of the one vital Force whereby he 
is and works ? All that a man does is physi- 
ognomical of him. You may see how a man 



136 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

would fight by the way in which he sings ; his 
courage, or want of courage, is visible in the 
word he utters, in the opinion he has formed, 
no less than in the stroke he strikes. He is one; 
and preaches the same Self abroad in all these 
ways. Without hands a man might have feet, 
and could still walk ; but, consider it, — without 
morahty, intellect were impossible for him ; a 
thoroughly immoral man could not know any- 
thing at all. To know a thing, what we can call 
knowing, a man must first love the thing, sym- 
pathise with it : that is, be virtuously related to 
it. If he have not the justice to put down his 
own selfishness at every turn, the courage to stand 
by the dangerous — true at every tiu-n, how shall 
he know ? His 'vdi'tues, all of them, will lie re- 
corded in his knowledge. Nature, with her truth, 
remains to the bad, to the selfish and the pusil- 
lanimous forever a sealed book : what such can 
know of Nature is mean, superficial, small : for 
the uses of the day merely." * 

This absolute unity of the moral and the spirit- 
ual man gives significance to the coiTect view of 
life ; true recognition of moral duty (which, if 
unconscious, exists in the soul most beautifully) 
leads to morality, so that spiritual greatness is 



* Lectures on Heroes, pp. 98-99. 



carlyle's ethics. 137 

exceptionally a moral one, and the spiritual rank 
of a nation brings with it moral greatness as a 
certam result. 

The first moral act which is obligatory to man, 
is " Renunciation," " Annihilation of Self," * the 
giving up of all ideas and hopes which more or 
less have in view happiness for one's own self. 
One's first duty is to subordinate one's own pleas- 
ure, one's own well-being to the great everlast- 
ing end which heaven has set before us. 

This command appears severe and giim, but is 
at the same time " beautiful and awful ; " * it de- 
mands infinite labour, infinite pains ; "a life of 
ease is not for any man or any God ; " this 
struggle, this " work " brings blessedness and 
perfects mankind ; it is the true commandment, 
the essence of all religion ; it can only be instilled 
into us when the consciousness of the eternal fills 
our lives. " For the son of man there is no noble 
cro^\'n, but is a crown of thorns ! " t 

" Life is earnest," was one of Carlyle's favourite 
mottoes ; but if the path of duty is rough and 
stony, and the battles bitter, it is nevertheless 
destiny divinely imposed upon us, and although 
annihilation of self, and renunciation binds us 



* Sartor Eesartus, p. 132. 

f Essay on Sir Walter Scott, p. 39. 

X Past and Present, p. 132. 



138' THOMAS CAELYLE. 

and our age conditiouiilly, Carlyle declares with 
reference to what Goethe and Schiller had tanjjrht 
him that a " higher morahtv " still rests in the 
lap of time, a morahty which leads all that is 
painful, troublesome and harsh in humanity to 
perfectness, and into harmony with the divine 
and the " eternally beautiful." * 

In the distant future Carlyle hopes that this 
harmony of the divine and the human will exist 
upon earth, will be the condition of all men whose 
first and individual dutv now is, without mur- 
muring, to strive after the fnltihuent of the di- 
vine duty of morality, t 

This unconditional belief that harsh and stern 
duty is " sent by God " gives " a world of 
strength in return for a world of hard struggle." X 

This is the teaching of Carlyle's life and works. 



* Carlyle's Essay on Biography, p. 56. 

t Carlyle's words remind us of the beautiful prophecy with 
which Enjerson closes his "Address," delivered before the 
Senior Class in Divinity College, Cambridge, July 15, 1838: "I 
look for the new Teacher, that shall follow so far those shining 
laws, that he shall see them come full circle ; shall see their 
rounding complete grace ; shall see the world to be the mirror 
of the soul ; shall see the identity of the law of gravitation with 
purity of heart ; and shall show that the Ought, that Duty, is 
one thing with Science, with Beauty and with Joy." Here is to 
be found the secret to Emerson's and Carlyh's fiiendship. 

X Carlyle's Essay on Characteristics, p. 25. 



carlyle's ethics. 139 

Froude says in his Life of Cailjle : " Carljle 
believed that every man had a special dnty to 
do in this world. If he had been asked what 
especially he conceived his own duty to be, he 
would have said that it was to force men to 
realize once more that the world was actually 
governed by a just God ; that the old familiar 
story, acknowledged everywhere in words on 
Sundays, and disregarded or denied openly on 
week-days, was, after all, true. His writings, 
every one of them, his essays, his lectures, his 
"History of the French Revolution," his "Crom- 
well," even his " Frederick," were to the same 
purpose and on the same text — that truth must 
be spoken and justice must be done ; on any other 
conditions no real commonwealth, no common 
welfare, is permitted or possible." * 

We shall conclude these remarks on Carlyle 
with the same words which he uttered upon the 
occasion of Goethe's death : " Precious is the 
new light of Knowledge which our Teacher con-, 
quers for us ; yet small to the new light of Love 
which also we derive from him : the most im- 
portant element of any man's performance is the 
Life he has accomplished. Under the intellect- 



* Froude's Life of Carlyle, Franklin Square Edition, vol. iii., 
p. 49. 



140 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

Tial union of man and man, which works by pre- 
cept, lies a holier union of aftection, ■working by 
example ; the influence of which latter, mystic, 
deep-reaching, all-embracing, can still less be 
computed. For Love is ever the beginning of 
Knowledge, as fire is of light ; and works also 
more in the manner of fire. That Goethe was a 
great Teacher of men means already that he was 
a good man." * 

According to our innermost conviction, we can 
and must apply this to Carlyle. His infirmities 
and deficiencies — which he himself in the last 
years of his life was inclined to assail too severe- 
ly, but whicli was natural to a man whose moral 
claims were of such greatness, and to a man of 
his excitability of disposition — his faults and his 
exaggerations, his enigmatic melancholy, which so 
often embittered the pleasures of life for himself 
and those about him ; all this, which has been 
so forcibly and willingly portrayed by his adver- 
saries, and is so easy to portray ; all this, is not 
able to cloud a j)icture of this magnificent man 
which lives in the hearts of his admirers. "When 
he is fully knowai, he will not be loved or admired 
the less because he had infirmities like the rest 
of us." t 



* Carlyle's Essay on the Death of Goethe, p. 48. 
t Fronde's Life of Carlyle, vol. i , Introduction. 



